New Dicey Dungeons build coming on the 8th instead

Hey hey! Had some unexpected things come up recently (including being stuck in an airport for two days!), and it’s really slowed down work on the the upcoming version v0.8 of Dicey Dungeons.

So, I’ve decided to push the next version back by a week! v0.8 will now be coming out on the 8th of June, instead of the 1st.

This is the first time I’ve delayed a build of Dicey Dungeons, and I really didn’t wanna do it 🙁 But ultimately, I think it’s important not to rush the new class. I’m really looking forward to sharing this new character with everyone!

I’ll post a little blog post with details about the new character on Friday to make up for it! Thanks!

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Help Wanted: Art Director for Dicey Dungeons

Applications are now closed. Thank you!

Hello blog readers! Apologies for the boring job post! (If you are not interested in being the new Art Director for Dicey Dungeons, you can stop reading now!)

I am looking for an Art Director for a new videogame I’m working on, Dicey Dungeons. It’s a full time position for 10 weeks, with some part time work requirements afterwards. Ideally, you’d be available to start within the next 3 or 4 weeks!

You can play an early work in progress version of Dicey Dungeons RIGHT NOW – I’ve been releasing early versions of the game as I go. Check it out at https://diceydungeons.com/. (The current version of the game is using my own placeholder art, and is not indicative of how I want the game to eventually look.)

The game’s Art Director would be responsible for every part of how the game looks, from top to bottom, to make the whole thing come together. You’d be working with two other people – me (Design/Programming) and the game’s musician.

What I’m looking for

For this game, I’m really interested stepping away from the 8-bit styles I’m mostly known for, and I would love to work with an animator. I think Dicey Dungeons would look great with animated cartoon characters!

The majority of the work will be animating enemy characters – however, there is also a lot of world design, UI work and also a small amount of cutscene work!

Things I’m into for this game: Colourful. Cute. Newgrounds. Adventure Time. Cartoon Network. Vectory. Animated. Expressive. Simple. Readable.

Things I’m not into for this game: Detailed. 8-bit. Retro. Pixel Art. Videogame. Noisy.

This might be a good match for you if: your style fits some of the things I’m into above. You’ve got some experience with both character design and animation. You’re happy working remotely. (If you’re around the UK it’d be great to have team meetings in person occasionally, but I don’t have a good space for you to work out of!). You don’t need to have been involved in making a game before, and your standard working hours don’t have to be UK hours, but you do need to be able to work on the game more-or-less full-time.

A Challenge

Here’s the biggest art puzzle in Dicey Dungeons:

The game is really UI heavy. One of the big things the game’s art director is going to need to figure out is how to make this screen look and feel great, because it’s what the game will look like 90% of the time!

Time

I estimate that this job is about 10 weeks of full time work, and then a couple of weeks of part time work. Here’s the actual list of work involved:

– Monster designs and animations (there’s a LOT of this, dozens and dozens. It’s mostly this, tbh)
– Player character designs and animations (there are six of these)
– Overall design, concept work, figuring things out
– Art for equipment
– Art for UI
– Art for combat stage layout
– Art for exploration stage
– Some cutscene stuff
– Meta stuff – icons, store page art, etc

Money Stuff

Alright! So, I have a budget of around £10,000 – £12,000 for this project. Over ten weeks and including some part time work after, that works out as a day rate of £200 per day. I would strongly prefer to make this game without the help of a publisher, if I can, so I can’t really go very far outside that budget.

Also: I am very open to having a conversation about revenue shares, and about finding a balance between revenue share and day rate. (I actually really like the idea of revenue sharing, as a way to, you know, stake your claim in the thing, make it something you OWN a bit of, rather than something you’re working on.)

Finally, I’m happy to talk about paying some amount of this upfront, as a way to secure your time and commitment to the project.

(My expectation would be that all work done under these terms would be exclusively for Dicey Dungeons, and not for any other projects or video games.)

Applications

If you’re interested, you can apply via this google form! Please fill it in by Monday the 4th of June.

[Applications closed]

Thank you!

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Dicey Decisions

Hello everyone! New build v0.7 of Dicey Dungeons is up!

So. For nearly three months, I’ve been working on this thing. And it’s still early days.

However.

I believe Dicey Dungeons is shaping up to be one of my best games.

So, it’s time I made some decisions about where this is going!

In order to tell everyone about it, I have conducted the following interview with myself! My Dice mascot will be asking the questions. Here goes!

Are you going to sell this game, or is this another free thing?

I’m going to sell it! Dicey Dungeons will be my third commercial game.

Ok! What platforms?

I’m probably going to initially release the game on Steam. After that, I’m going to look into doing mobile releases on iPhone and Android shortly afterwards.

How big is this game going to get? How much work is left?

There are currently three playable classes in the game. In the final build, I’m hoping to do six in total. Six seems to be a lucky number for me.

You can also expect the final build to have a LOT more polish, much better balance and a lot more content. Once I have the six final classes, my focus will be on making those as good as they can be.

I’m expecting the project to take another three months or so, so you can expect the final version later this year!

Is it just you, or are you going to work with other people?

This project will be a collaboration! I’m very soon going to be teaming up with an artist and a musician to bring everything together.

I’ve already found an amazing musician for the project (more on that soon), and am currently searching for the right artist. (more on that soon too.)

Are you going to continue releasing public builds?

Good question! Since this is going to be commercial, at a certain point it makes sense to stop releasing builds of the game for free. I’m not really sure when that point should be, but probably before I have all six classes in there. So, probably within the next month or so.

It’s been amazing, sharing builds every two weeks, warts and all. One of the big reasons this whole thing has been going so well is because that process is so good, and because I’ve lucked into an amazing community of people (on my discord, here!) who are playing each update, and giving me amazing feedback on it. Everyone who’s been part of that community before this blog post will be getting a free copy of the game, as a tiny gesture of appreciation.

Are you ever going to have non six sided dice? How about d20s?

NEVER

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