The Vertical Roller
Number of Players
2-4
Recommended Ages
8+
Time to Play
30-60 minutes
Mechanics Used
Push Your Luck, Set Collection, Retro Gaming Theme
Elevator Pitch
As a winner of the Arcade Game Design challenge at The Game Crafter, Galaxy Dice combines the Push Your Luck mechanic while strongly invoking the feeling of arcade classics like Gradius and Xevious.
Completion Status
Finished but always willing to make adjustments.
A Vertical Rolling Game
You've heard me talk about being a finalist in Game Design contests in the past. Well, this is the game that actually won me one of those contests. Designed for the Arcade Game Design Challenge, this is a game themed after classic vertical scrollers such as Xavix and Gradius.
The game is a Push Your Luck style game involving 13 custom dice and several cards. The cards are Stages, Bosses, and Glitches. The stages are divided among 5 groups. Mecha Planet, Ocean Planet, Desert Planet, Volcano Planet, and Bonus Stage. Bosses are the end game condition and actually unlock new dice for players. Finally there are glitches and these are rule breakers.
After setup, placing a set number of cards out on the table, the game begins and the player must choose if they will attack a Boss or a Stage. If they tackle a stage, they have 3 rolls of 7 dice and may choose any stage in the lineup (except Bonus Stages). If they can meet the die requirements, they claim the card. If they can meet the die requirements of the stage AND the Bonus Stage, they may claim both but the Bonus Stage must be claimed with another card.
Bosses are different and in order to face a boss, you need to beat at least one stage of theirs. So to face the Gunnery Wall, you need to beat at least 1 Mecha Planet stage. Now for each stage you have against the boss, you get another roll. So 3 Mecha Planets is 3 rolls against the Gunnery Wall. If you beat the boss, you not only claim the points, but you'll unlock a different die that could be more powerful for you on later turns. The downside is you can no longer claim cards of that stage type.
So when you roll, for the most part, it's fairly simple except for explosions and ships. If you have 3 explosions showing, it's a game over and your turn is up. Ship results cancel explosions, so if you have 3 explosions and 1 ship, you can continue because one explosion is cancelled.
When Peter Jackson chose my game as the winner, he described it thusly. "If you've played Yahtzee, you've basically played a less exciting version of Galaxy Dice."
Before the contest was announced, someone in the board game designers guild on Facebook mentioned the Megaman Board Game announcement from Jasco and how much it was destined to suck. I responded by pointing out the simple concept of collecting stages via dice rolls to use against bosses which unlocked better dice. No one reacted and I let that stew.
Then the contest was announced and I was already working on various "video gaming themed" game designs, most sucked, but this original idea kept popping into my skull and Blastius was born. Blastius, a horrible name meant to draw comparisons to Gradius, would eventually be renamed to Galaxy Dice but early playtesting told us that something was missing.
"If I get 5 of a kind, I get nothing. That's bull!" This is when Glitches were introduced along with Bonus Stages. Due to the card count, I had an uneven number of cards for stages and I wanted something interesting for people winning the low scoring stage cards to do. Glitches, I wanted them to grant an exploit of some kind and be able to be stolen. In the end, the changes and the pixel artwork was enough to create a well-rounded game.
Yes, Megaman inspired Galaxy Dice.
Development & History
