Tomas Martinez Portfolio

Tomas Martinez PortfolioTomas Martinez PortfolioTomas Martinez Portfolio

Tomas Martinez Portfolio

Tomas Martinez PortfolioTomas Martinez PortfolioTomas Martinez Portfolio
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Dice Defender

Game Info

  • Name: Dice Defender
  • Genre: Top-down Tower Defense
  • Platform: PC
  • Game Engine: Unity 2D
  • Scripting Language: C#
  • Team Size: Solo
  • Background Information: Made for the Game Maker's Toolkit Game Jam 2022. 48 hours were given to make a game using the theme "roll of the dice". The game was further developed after the jam, the results of which can be seen on the this page.

Download on Itch.io

Roles and Responsibilities

As the solo developer for Dice Defenders, Tomas' role throughout the project was that of game designer, programmer, and artist. Tomas designed the game's gameplay structure and core mechanics. At the end of the game jam Tomas submitted the project to the Game Maker's Toolkit Game Jam 2022 and continued to update and improve upon it.

Ideation Phase

Using a Mind Map, a variety of concepts related to the theme were brainstormed including: "Placing dice on a grid", "Different kinds of Dice", and "Randomness". From there, an idea was formed about a tower defense game, wherein the towers are different types of dice.


A key design decision was to make both low rolls and high rolls beneficial to the player. To accomplish this, the towers would be assigned different types: modifiers that affect the tower's attack type, attack range, rate of fire, and unique ability. The dice's value, which would be randomly rolled, would further affect these modifiers by increasing or decreasing different statistics.

Game Concept

Play as the protector of a small village, defending it against a rival power. Strategically place towers while assigning them unique elemental attributes to successfully defend against the waves of incoming enemies.


Inspired by games like Bloons Tower Defense, Kingdom Rush, and Fieldrunners 2, Dice Defenders has you permanently placing dice of different values on a grid. Each die becomes a tower that can be assigned an elemental attribute, which uses the value of the die to crdifferent effects.

Key Features

Elemental Tower Types

There are four unique types of towers available to choose from: Fire, Ice, Poison, and Electric. Fire does high base damage, Ice slows in an area, poison deals damage over time, and electric shots bounce between enemies. Each tower type uses the dice value of the tower in a different way. Use a high value to increase the base damage of a fire tower, or use a low value to increase the slow amount of an ice tower.

Enemy Spawning and Pathing

Enemies are pooled at the start of each round and are set active using a timer. They travel along in a straight line from point to point. A line gizmo was created to more easily visualize the path.

Placing and Modifying Dice

Each round the player is given a number of dice. To start the round they must place the dice and assign them a tower type. For each new round, the dice from the previous round are locked and cannot be repositioned. Additionally, the value of each of these dice is randomized as if the dice had been rolled again. The only way players can interact with dice from previous rounds is by changing the tower's type.

Post-Mortem

What went well

What went wrong

What went wrong

 The ideation process was the strongest part of the jam, with a unique game concept coming as a result of good ideation practices. I was satisfied with the drag-and-dropping of the dice, as well as using the line renderer to display the towers' attack range. I was also quite happy with the simple yet charming particle effects that accurately conveyed the different tower mechanics.

What went wrong

What went wrong

What went wrong

 The scope was far too big for one person, and coding setbacks ate away at the time available. Though simple in concept, I had never made tower defense game before so I didn't have a good idea of how to do a lot of the mechanics. Though I submitted a complete gameplay loop, I was unsatisfied with the end result leading to continuous improvement over the next few months.

Continuing Development

The following tasks are to be completed, in no particular order, to finish polishing this game.

Determine if the game will be infinite and if so design an algorithm for determining the number and type of enemies spawned. If not, determine the number of rounds until the game ends. Also determine if a score system will be used or if a health system will be used. 

Create a spawning system that uses scriptable objects to create a variety of closely related but variable enemy types 

I am not an artist, though I am able to create simple pixel art assets using Aseprite, a pixel art software. I will aim to create art for the tower shooting animations, projectiles, UI, Menus, and enemies. 

Download "Dice Defender" on itch.io

Copyright © 2023 Tomas Martinez Game Designer - All Rights Reserved.

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