Dice Climber

Dice Climber is an arcade style endless vertical platformer where you climb a falling building made out of die blocks. Each time you touch a block, the number on its face decreases; when you touch a block with a 1 face, it gets destroyed. Each floor of the building rolls a die to determine the starting face of all its blocks, as well as how many keys are required to open its locks leading to the next floor. The game is over when you fall below the bottom of the screen.

This was originally created for GMTK Game Jam 2022, with additions and improvements made after the jam ended.

Default Controls

* All controls can be remapped in the options menu.
** The main menu can always be navigated with the arrow keys, and with Enter to confirm, in case you don't remember your mappings or don't realize it's in Gamepad mode.

Keyboard:

Arrow Keys: Move
Z: Jump/Menu confirmation
X: Back
PgUp: Page Up
PgDn: Page Down

Gamepad:

D-Pad: Move
Face button 1 (XBOX "A" / PS "X"): Jump/Menu confirmation
Face button 2 (XBOX "B" / PS "Circle"): Back
LB (PS L1): Page Up
RB (PS R1): Page Down

Press jump while touching a wall to wall jump.
Hold up while wall jumping to gain more height and less speed.

Page Up/Page Down are used for skipping through the Detailed Results view more quickly.

Tips

There are actually 2 types of wall jump. Holding up while wall jumping will gain you more height, which is the only way to clear the tallest floors without the aid of springs, other blocks etc.

Low rolls might seem impossible to deal with at first, but with some planning it becomes manageable. If you see the floor above you is a 1, for example, you can skip the keys on the current floor so that the lock blocks above provide a safe place to stand.

Hitting a 1 block from below makes it disappear faster than standing on it. So you get some lenience for moving off of a block before it disappears, but if you're trying to quickly jump up through the bottom you won't have to wait as much.

When the last key for a floor is collected, the lock blocks become inactive immediately, meaning you can jump straight up through the locks if the last key is in the path of your jump.

Even though the screen scrolls automatically, you can force it to scroll if you are near the top of the screen. Forcing the screen to scroll faster gives a slight score bonus for every tick where it scrolls faster than normal.