Developer: Terry Cavanagh
Publisher: Terry Cavanagh
Rrp: £11.39 (Humblebundle and Steam)
Released: 13th August 2019
Available on: Humblebundle and Steam
Played Using: Mouse
Approximate game length: 20 hours ish
What would you do for your deepest desire? How far would you go? Would you risk being stuck as a slave (in one form or another) for all eternity should you fail or give up? Apparently some people are very willing to risk it all.
Dicey Dungeons is a roguelite dice placement game with a game show aesthetic. The core conceit is that each of the die in the game show were once people and have chosen to go on the game show to attain their greatest desire. The problem is the host of the show is Lady Luck herself and she isn’t merciful. If you manage to make your way through all her dungeons you’ll win your prize, fail or give up and you remain in the game show forever as her slave.
You’ll start with only one character to play as which is the Warrior, however as you play you’ll quickly unlock others. Once they are all unlocked there are a total of six characters to play as, each of which have their own mechanics.
As you defeat enemies you gain experience points and gold. As you you likely expect experience points will eventually level you up which gains you an increased maximum health pool. The gold you gain is used in stores to buy equipment should you wish to.
When you level up your maximum health increases, every second level also grants an additional reward like a new item as well as an extra die to use.
Each class has six ‘episodes’ to play through the first of which is generally the easiest so that the player can learn that classes mechanics. However from that point on additional conditions are added to the levels, such as causing your die to lose its max health as it levels etc. Each of these episodes has six levels for your chosen character to battle through with the final one being a boss encounter.
Combat consists of you placing and (hopefully) manipulating dice. For example perhaps you have an attack that will have a specific effect if a 6 is placed there, but the closest you have is a 5. In that case if you have the ‘bump’ equipment you would place the die on that first which in turn turns that 5 into a 6. There are lots of other pieces of equipment that you can collect and equip to try and maximize your chances at success.
Each class has their own special ‘limit break’ which charges as you get injured, once it reaches its full charge you can use it on your turn and it’ll have some kind of effect (dependant on the class you are).
For most classes there are six slots for equipment available (some classes don’t work in the same way and have no ‘equipment’ slots). Certain pieces of equipment take up two slots while others take up one so you will have to look carefully at what you bring with you into combat because once in combat you can’t swap your equipment.
At the start of the combat you will receive a notification of whether the enemy you face has any weaknesses or strengths. If an enemy is weak to an attack or damage type it receives double damage from that type of damage.
While I enjoyed playing this game it can be extremely unforgiving. The amount of times I’ve started an episode only to be defeated by the first enemy I’ve encountered simply because the die rolled badly for me was bordering on the maddening.
If this appeals to you perhaps try;
Tharsis
Slay the Spire
Monster Train
