Diceroll Studios was born in December 2015, founded by 5 students with barely any experience in game development. We met in May while on internship at the Game Innovation Program (previously known as GAMBIT), and we created re:color as a financial literacy game for OCBC. After the internship ended, we were persuaded to continue building the game, and the rest, as they say, was history.
The original internship team and OCBC Project
The team is currently 6 people strong, but when it all began, we were 4 interns with zero game development experience.
We were grouped together to work on the OCBC project, and they gave us a measure of freedom to do whatever we wanted to fulfill the project objective, which was to create a financial literacy game. The result was an early demo of re:color.
4 months for a demo from scratch
In the end of our internship, the games were judged by Ubisoft Singapore and we received an award for Best Overall Game. It was then that we realized that our game might actually be good.
A little after that, somebody from the industry came forward and told us he would like to give us a little seed money to start our own company so that we might be able to finish re:color, and that was how it started.
Professional Jugglers
When we began to work on re:color as a commercial game instead of just a project for an international bank, we were juggling between college classes and internships.
We set a deadline for ourselves – September, so that we didn’t have to compete for attention with the Halloween and Winter crowd at the end of the year.
This meant that we were going to school/work from morning till evening, and then working on the game at night. We were incredibly lucky though - we were supported by the local Singaporean indies who were all super willing to advise us on what we should be doing, and introduced us to the people who could help us get where we needed to be.
When re:color finally hits the app store, it would happen because of their help and guidance over the last 6 months.
Mad Rush for Casual Connect
We decided to submit our game for Casual Connect but we didn’t actually think that we could’ve made it in with the build we had. It was unfinished and unpolished, and it just wasn’t something that we were ready to show people.
The few weeks before we had to submit the game for Indie Prize, we slept very little. The game was going through a multitude of changes and with only 1 artist, we were getting swamped.
The submission was due in March and we wanted to get in very very badly, so we pushed aside our perfectionist tendencies and finally, 1 day before submissions were closed, we sent in our game and hoped for the best.
We’ve seen the games that were nominated in the previous years and didn’t actually think that we could win anything. When the event came around, we were one of the least prepared booths. Our producer had been manually cutting out the stickers the night before, because we printed it late, and on the second day of the event she had to head back to work because she had been on internship with another startup at the time.
On the third day, as we sat in the hall with hundreds of other indies, we saw our game being displayed on the gigantic screen, and we were nominated for Best Mobile Game.
Even though we didn’t win this time, when we stepped out of that hall, it really felt like we did something right.
Steady march to Release
We’re working hard to get our game out there. They say that creating a game is one thing, but getting it released is a whole other ball game – and they were right.
We don’t get to meet up often because of our work and schooling schedules, and most of us are barely 21, learning to be an adult and trying not to bankrupt ourselves.
re:color became more than just another project. After our Indie Prize nomination, we were certain that we’ve got something good, and we’re going full steam ahead to make sure that we’re doing this right.
2016 is going to be a big year for us.
“If you’re interested to find out more about our game, the team, or just like to have a pint of beer and talk game dev, feel free to drop us an email!” - the developers invite.
They’re active on Facebook, and contact Veronica at if you’ve got media/business inquiries! (Hint: The Diceroll Studios team is looking for publishers who can help them penetrate the Western market!)
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