A devlog for a self-hosted browser strategy game: how it was designed, how the probability works, how it was built, and how telemetry data drove balance changes.
| Document | What it covers |
|---|---|
| gameplay.md | Rules, strategic depth, guardian abilities and design intent |
| math.md | Dice win probabilities, reinforcement economy, the numbers behind the decisions |
| technology.md | Hex map generation, single-file build system, telemetry pipeline |
| tuning.md | What the data revealed about guardian balance, and what changed |
Dice & Shrines is a turn-based territory conquest game — five asymmetric factions (Guardians), procedurally generated maps, and a dice-rolling combat system where positional play matters more than luck over time.
The interesting parts: the reinforcement economy creates a compounding advantage for connected territory that shapes every decision. The five Guardians each bend one aspect of that economy. And the whole thing is wired to a telemetry backend that captures every attack, every game, every elimination — which revealed a balance problem that wasn't visible from playtesting alone.