Too Many Bones

Too Many Bones comes loaded for bear by breaking into a new genre: the dice-builder RPG. This game takes everything you think you know about dice-rolling and turns it on its head. Dripping with strategy, this fantasy-based RPG puts you in the skin of a new race and takes you on an adventure to the northern territories to root out and defeat growing enemy forces and of course the infamous "baddie" responsible. Team up or go it alone in a 1-4 player Coop or Solo play campaign. With over 100+ unique skill dice and 4-7 classes to choose from, every battle is its own mini challenge to figure out. Your adventure will consist of 8-12 battles before you reach your final destination and face off against one of a number of possible kingpins in order to win. Along the way, you will be faced with storyline decisions that will quickly have you weighing risk/reward, odds, and logic - with dice woven into every aspect! Your party will also be faced with other decisions: when to rest, when to explore, or even which fights to pursue! The Encounter cards offer fun plot twists and some comic relief, all while setting the stage for your next battle.

{
  "game_id": 192135,
  "name": "Too Many Bones",
  "core_verb": "roll skill dice, fight",
  "decision_shape": "mixed:probabilistic+combinatorial",
  "reward_schedule": "engine_compounding",
  "aesthetics": [
    "Challenge",
    "Fantasy",
    "Narrative"
  ],
  "core_loop_pitch": "Train new skill dice between fights, roll your custom pool to lock attacks, defenses and abilities each round.",
  "mobile_translation_difficulty": "Medium",
  "translation_difficulty_reason": "Dice-builder RPG mechanics are inherently digital-friendly, but no official port exists; the asymmetric class depth and tactile poker chips are part of the appeal.",
  "direct_digital_port": null,
  "closest_loop_translation": "none yet",
  "primitive_tags": [
    "dice_pool_building",
    "skill_unlock_tree",
    "lock_dice_to_action_slot",
    "encounter_card_branch",
    "tyrant_boss_showdown",
    "hp_chip_attrition"
  ],
  "confidence": 0.7
}

{
  "game_id": 192135,
  "name": "Too Many Bones",
  "mechanics": {
    "core_verb_long": "You grab a fistful of custom-engraved rubberized dice (your Gearloc's evolving skill pool plus base attack/defense dice), shake, and roll into a tray, then physically lock-in successful faces while re-rolling failures up to a per-turn limit. Between battles you spend Training Points to add new skill dice to your personal pool, swapping in better dice as your character levels — the satisfaction is the slow accretion of dice you actually want to roll. Combat is a tactile loop of roll, lock, re-roll, then placement of poker-chip baddies on a 4x4 neoprene battle mat.",
    "core_loop_long": "A campaign is 7-10 'days,' each consisting of: (1) draw an Encounter card with a branching narrative choice; (2) resolve the choice — often a stat-check roll against your dice or a routed branch into combat; (3) if combat, fight on the 4x4 mat using initiative-tracked turns where each Gearloc and Baddie acts in order, spending dice for attacks/skills/defense; (4) collect Loot and Training Points; (5) Recover at day's end (heal, scout next day, attempt to pick locked Trove Loot). The campaign ends when you reach the Tyrant — a final boss with unique dice and rules — and either defeat it or your party falls. Persistent state across days: HP carries forward but recovers, dice pool grows, loot accumulates.",
    "decision_space": "Each turn you decide how many dice to commit, which to lock vs reroll, and how to spend their faces — every face is a choice (attack, skill activation, defense, or banked Bones for emergency abilities). Positioning on the 4x4 mat is enormous: melee Gearlocs like Tantrum want adjacency, ranged like Patches want line-of-sight from the back row, and Baddies have their own movement priorities. Between battles, the meta-decision is dice-pool composition — which of 16 character-specific skill dice to unlock first, balancing offense vs utility vs defense — and whether to push deeper or rest. Option counts at a typical turn are wide (5-8 reasonable dice allocations) and the planning horizon is 1-2 turns because Baddie AI is deterministic enough to forecast.",
    "skill_expression": "Dominant skill is probabilistic risk modeling: every dice roll has a known face distribution, and strong players intuit when to commit 5 dice for a 90% kill versus 3 dice for a 60% kill plus a positional hedge. Second is spatial/tactical planning on the cramped 4x4 grid — chokepoint control, exploiting Baddie movement rules, denying flanks. Third is dice-pool curation across the campaign: knowing which Gearloc skills synergize and pruning weak dice early. Memory load is moderate (Baddie behaviors, status effects). Mental arithmetic is constant but light (summing attack values, comparing to defense). Weak players tunnel on damage; strong players treat each die as a multi-purpose resource and read board state two threats ahead.",
    "tactile_dependency": "low",
    "tactile_dependency_reason": "The dice are gorgeous and the chips are premium, but every game state is fully legible — dice faces are deterministic icons, the 4x4 grid is trivially digital, and Baddie AI is rules-driven. Chip Theory's components carry brand emotion, not information density that resists screen translation. A digital port works cleanly; what's lost is the heft, not the logic."
  },
  "theme": {
    "promise": "Be a quirky 'Gearloc' adventurer in a steampunk-fantasy frontier, building a custom dice arsenal across an 8-12 day campaign that ends in a boss fight against a named Tyrant — D&D-flavored RPG progression without a Dungeon Master.",
    "setting": "fantasy, steampunk, adventure, frontier",
    "narrative": "campaign — 7-10 day branching journey toward one of multiple Tyrants, with Encounter cards that fork outcomes; story is light-touch but consistently present, not pasted-on",
    "audience": "hobbyist, hardcore strategist",
    "art_direction": "Anthony LeTourneau-led whimsical-grotesque fantasy: muscular Gearlocs with exaggerated proportions, saturated palette, hand-painted Baddie portraits on poker chips. Stylized cartoon fantasy that leans goofy rather than grimdark — closer to Adventure Time meets Warhammer than to Tolkien."
  },
  "translation": {
    "digital_meta_layer_ideas": [
      "Roguelite tyrant-run: pick a Gearloc, procgen 8-day path with branching encounter nodes (Slay-the-Spire map), draftable skill-die unlocks at each rest, run ends at Tyrant or wipe — each Tyrant is a distinct boss-rush season",
      "Async co-op campaign with 2-4 friends sharing a persistent party state, each player's turn resolved on their own time with push notifications when battle resumes",
      "Daily Skirmish: fixed Gearloc loadout + fixed Baddie spawn, leaderboard scored on turns-to-clear and HP remaining",
      "Gearloc mastery ladder: per-character unlock track where playing each Gearloc to mastery unlocks cosmetic dice skins and harder Tyrant variants"
    ],
    "closest_mobile_genre": "roguelite tactics RPG",
    "live_service_potential": "high"
  },
  "confidence": 0.75,
  "extraction_version": "v3"
}