Towers of Kwatz

Inspiration

Towers of Kwatz combines the classic tower defense genre Yahtzee-like dice rolling. TD elements bring escalating dangers and powerful upgrades. Dice elements bring the perfect mix of randomness and strategy. ToK is for players who love engrossing decision-based puzzles, wrapped up in a familiar high-stakes TD setting.

What it does

An army of goblins is attacking your wall, and your only defense is a set of 5 dice. Each turn, you roll your dice over the battlefield, doing damage to the advancing army. After every roll, you have a choice: roll the dice again for more damage, or hold back some of the dice for a chance to make a combo on your next roll. Combos are familiar poker hands like three of a kind, full house, small straight, etc. Making a combo builds a tower, which does extra arrow damage to enemies. Enemies advance toward you after every roll, so the pressure keeps mounting. After defeating a wave, players choose to purchase re-rolls or tower repairs, as well as various upgrades like better walls, stronger towers, heavier dice, and more. You’ll need these upgrades, as each subsequent wave brings new, stronger enemies.

How we built it

Design discussion and directive-writing happened in Claude chat. All game code was written by Claude Code from numbered directives ("D1", "D2"…) and smaller "chat directives" for tuning. I created the pixel art using Aseprite.

Challenges we ran into

Balancing the progression and economy took many, many playthroughs

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Every dice roll feels satisfyingly intense. You eagerly watch them bounce around the field crushing goblins, and hope to see the right numbers turn up. Making a longshot 5 of a Kind combo feels amazing, and the ensuing arrow volley from that tower can save your wall. Missing the one number that you needed to complete the Full House is agony, and the army’s advance seals your fate.

What we learned

Don't overcomplicate the core fun. The original vision had players rolling 5 elemental dice to combine different powers, but this was confusing and overshadowed the real joy of crushing goblins with dice and making combos.

What's next for Towers of Kwatz

Player stats and leaderboards for longest runs/most goblins defeated. There are currently 5 enemy types, but some mid-level bosses would be awesome. I’d also add a narrative layer to keep players more emotionally invested.

Built With

• aseprite
• claude
• three.js