Hi everyone, it is finally launch day !!!!!
Dice Tribes: Ambitions is now released and I want to reflect and also discuss what is going to happen to the game over the next few months.
The game
In summary, DTA is a dice-based worker placement game, inspired by many games that came before. Your goal is to complete an ambition while keeping your population alive. Each ambition is unique in their own ways and provides different challenges.
The beginning
The game initially started out in a game jam last year.
The original submission is still available online if you know where to search. I can’t link it on Steam :(. The game felt different from a lot of games I played, so I decided to take a leap of faith and pause the development of a game I was working on and pursue Dice Tribes: Ambitions.
DTA was planned as a 6 months project to allow me to publish my first game. I missed the timeline by 2 months but I had also increased the scope, so I guess that’s fine.
Plans
While working towards the 1.0, I came up with ideas for new ambitions and buildings. I also have ideas for new mechanics / systems that might also work in the game. However, because they require a lot of play-testing and balancing, I decided to just focus on the launch instead.
Now that the game is launched, I plan to start adding these ambitions to the game. Over the next two weeks, I will be fixing bugs, and preparing the engine for the new features :). If you encounter any issue, feel free to join the discord or post it in Discussions.
After those are done, I have 3 ideas for ambitions. They may not all turn out to be fun or balanced, but I do hope to at least add one of them over the next month. I also planned to add some variant to the existing buildings. This should make each run feels more different. As these requires a lot of play-testing/balancing, I will be setting up a beta branch eventually for those who wants to try them before they are ready :).
Conclusion
As a Solo Dev, time management is really the hardest part. There are features that are “missing” from the game that some might consider the game to be incomplete; i.e. Steam achievements. I hope to add those to the game eventually. I hope the lack of achievements does not reduce the enjoyment you get from the game :).
On a related note, some may not feel that the game is worth the price. Do wait for sales, and enjoy the demo in the meantime. The demo will continue to be updated and whatever is available to the first scenario will also be available in the demo. Think of the demo as a F2P version of the game, without ads or any IAP "bulls**t".
If you read this far, thank you. I hope you enjoy the game. You can join the discord or follow me on Twitter @ZwodahS for updates. Do drop a review on Steam if you feel like it :). It really helps a lot for visibility.
Good luck on your dice rolls!