Last week, in our Dev Blog #1, we reviewed the changes and differences between The Hexadome: Aristeia Showdown, and Aristeia!, the board game that inspired us.
Today, we're taking an in-depth look at the changes we've made around the dice system.
Aristeia's dice system! is really one of the strengths of the game. Dice of different colors, a “Switch” system allowing you to make strategic choices: we like the depth that this brings to the game, and we're not going to lie, it's always very satisfying to roll three, four, five dice at a time when playing a board game.
When we chose to make a video game inspired by Aristeia! rather than a pure conversion, the question of the dice system naturally arose.
We quickly realised that the dice wasn’t adapted to the pacing we wanted for the game. Not only was there a lot of information to digest, but it also posed fluidity issues: long interruptions between the moment when a player rolls their dice and the result of the roll, and unsatisfactory animations. With the choice to pivot, we also chose to rethink the dice mechanics.
- We have kept the overall dice intention, using a roulette or slot system. The values of each action have been designed with each characters’ strengths and weaknesses in mind.
- A Switch system, pictured by exclamation points “!”, gives you a bonus when you land on it. Each character has a different set of bonuses depending on their profile.
- Each of the six slots can be modified thanks to buffs and debuffs, which increases the chances of landing on a success or a Switch.
- It is also possible to modify the value of each attribute, thanks to different mechanics which will be detailed in a future Dev Blog.
We can therefore have an influence on the dice, making the results feel more « alive » by removing some undesirable results or finding ways to increase the displayed values.
This system allows you to keep the idea of the different types of rolls used in Aristeia! (“face to face” rolls and “single” rolls), while offering more fluidity. This new dice system has also been applied to characters’ attacks and skills, and well as to their statistics such as Defense, Agility, etc.
We find this system to be the perfect balance between ease of use and strategic depth, and we have plenty of ideas to push it further and make it even more interesting! Follow us for the next dev updates!
