Developer: Destinybit
Steam Deck Compatibility?: Playable
Rrp: £11.49 (Gog.com, Humble, Steam and Epic)
I’ve seen this game described as a roguelite city builder and I have to disagree on the ‘roguelite’ descriptor, just because a game has a procedurally generated map doesn’t make it a roguelite. No, this game is a strategic city builder with dice mechanics, it’s a mouthful, I know. It actually reminds me of a board game I own called Waggle Dance, a game in which you roll dice and then assign them positions based on what’s on their faces and what will be most advantageous to you. This game is that crossed with The Settlers.
The various die you have represent the people of your settlement and the dies colouring indicates what class the die belongs to, of which there are five. Orange are peasants, the backbone of your workforce. Green are civilians, who are more specialised and educated than peasants. Blue are soldiers, who defend your settlement from raiders. Red are merchants, bring in reliable gold and resources. Lastly is purple, the monks, they cleanse your die of corruption and can bless them to be more potent.
As is the case of any city builder you slowly grow your settlement up and carefully manage its resources. The problem is your resources are brought in by those die and depending on what face they land on they may not be able to perform the task you need. On top of that, the die have a durability that depletes with each usage or roll, when they reach zero they are removed from your dice pool (which has a limit of 12). A die being removed causes that dies class to lose some happiness and an unhappy populous is not something you want. Thankfully, you can mitigate that through events etc.
Also a trick I worked out is that though you can only have 12 dice in your dice pool that just means the ones that are ‘idle’ die that are working don’t count toward that number until they return to your hand. Because of this you can carefully juggle them somewhat and operate on far more than 12 dice.
Oh, I really enjoyed this game, its definitely got a lot going on such as tech trees, challenges and opponents. Not to mention the world is a ring like in Halo, an interesting design choice.
