Dicey Dungeons

The player fights through enemies with equipment that both have. Each equipment needs dice to work, and some of them need specific rolls or multiple dice to work. As the player levels up and progresses through each game, they get to roll more dice and upgrade their equipment until they get to the sixth floor to fight the boss. Each playable dice has its own gimmick. The Warrior can simply reroll his dice. The Thief can steal the enemy’s equipment to use for himself. The Robot rolls until either he goes to his maximum, if he goes over all of his equipment is disabled but if he matches he gets to do a bonus action. The Inventor scraps one of his equipment after every battle to do a free action with in the next battle. The Witch has spell slots that she can put equipment in and she gains equipment from rolling specific die. Finally, the Jester gets his equipment in card packs that he goes through which he can discard or play for free with his special ability. Other special abilities roll or reroll dice for the other characters.

The basic gameplay loop gets twisted through each of the six playable dice's six episodes. The first is to get used to the character’s own unique gimmick, the next two either changes how that gimmick works or how the character rolls dice, the fourth is a difficulty tweak where enemies are stronger with upgraded equipment, the fifth changes how all equipment works in some way, and the last one adds a new gimmick on each floor with an option to start on a harder difficulty and with different equipment. After every episode is completed a special finale is unlocked. There are also bonus episodes added in later updates. In “Halloween” half of the cast gets a special challenge to fight through. In “Reunion” every enemy has updated equipment, same with the dice.

Dicey Dungeons tends to land on the easier side, with most of the difficulty coming from poor planning or just getting plain screwed over. It’s something that’s quick to pick up and can easily come back to at any time between battles. The game is also not filled with deep complexity, there are some fun infinites or chain reactions that the player can pull off but the player doesn’t need to act like they’re playing chess in order to win. The enemy roster has a few repeated gimmicks and the simple systems don’t even allow the bosses to feel anything more like a normal fight with more hp and damage.

The artsyle is simple but effective. The character design is done quite well, from the enemies, to the dice, to Lady Luck, the host of the game. There is a very basic plot of trying to escape her dungeons as her games are rigged. Most of the dialogue comes from around battles and episodes but it’s fun and act as neat world/character building. Visually it’s obvious that this is a game show and the backstage of a set. The sound design makes rolling dice and using equipment feel good and the soundtrack is fun. Nothing is too distracting to the gameplay and serves quite well for the overall experience. 

I’d recommend this to anyone that doesn’t mind a little gambling in their strategy games. It’s also not extremely difficult so it also works well for any beginners to roguelike deckbuilders. Of course anyone familiar to the genre will also get a good time out of this. Those that aren’t inclined for strategy will dislike this nor will people that don’t like getting screwed over occasionally. For me this is an 8/10. The game can get repetitive at times but that loop is quite fun to me.