Dicey Dungeons (2019)

I really enjoyed figuring out my own strategies for this game! Some of the characters were definitely more fun than the others.

My issues:

1. The random elements can end a run early. To retry a fight I wound up pressing Esc, going back to the title, and going back into my game. This helped bring the joy back up after playing without doing this and getting playing back to where I was.

2. The voice audio is fine during the conversation parts before and after each round, but during its almost inaudible.. such a strange issue to go unnoticed. I could not enjoy any of the enemies noises they were making I less I put voices at 100 and music to 20. But then the conversation parts are way too loud. Well it's better than the normal audio leveling, I guess.

I'm not the biggest roguelike fan but I love deckbuilding games, so I wasn't sure wether I would end up liking it or not. About 50 hours later, I can say I love it!

The game core is always the same: You need to defeat enemies to advance while upgrading your cards, but the different characters (that play very distinct one from the other) and the unique rules of each level (sometimes as simple as "harder enemies" while others will dramatically change how to use the character) leads to a game that never once felt repetitive. Plus, you only need to beat five out of the six levels that each character has, so if there is a level that you find way to frustrating you can just ignore it!

The game not only has great visuals and sound design, but an amazing story that is told little by little and never interrupts the player. I don't want to reveal much, but the ending is truly worth reaching.

I think the hardest part about designing a game around dices is, obviously, luck, but the game handles it brilliantly to the point where RNG is quite a small factor, something rarely seen in roguelike and deckbuilding games.

I feel the game didn't recieve as much recognision as the other two Terry Cavanagh's games (VVVVVV and Super Hexagon) which is quite unfair given the quality and originality of it. And in case all of this wasn't enough, the game was recently updated with a new short campaign for free!

Dicey Dungeon is a game design masterpiece I will not forget anytime soon.

What a pure joy to play. It's unusual for games of this day and age to be so distinct in its gameplay formula and flawlessly executed at the same.

Like a twisted version of Yatzy, Dicey Dungeon constantly requires you to make interesting and meaningful choices. Which enemy should I take on first? Should I reroll the dice or go with what I have? Is this coin worth more than the benefit of buying a new equipment? It's a constant mitigation of risk, and more exciting than any recent battle system I can think of. Even if the game allows you to be really smart by abusing complex synergies, the even more impressive feature is how you always feel smart when you make what really amounts to quite small optimisations of your play style. Fooling your brain like that is a showcase of competent game design.

I think Dicey Dungeon's biggest strength is that it avoids two flaws very common for deck building games (and extended to WRPGs and Grand Strategy Games) - Awful visual design and UI. One of the main reasons I have never gotten down to play Hearthstone or the more recent Monster Train, despite my genuine interest for strategic turn based battle systems, are the hideous aesthetics and lack of a refined visual representation of in-game systems. Dicey Dungeons manages to maintain a sense of expressiveness and personality in its art design, while simultaneously visualising complex gameplay systems in a stylistic manner. I am honestly surprised as to how unusual it is for developers of this genre to even consider tasteful art style as just an important priority as creating fun new cards, but glad that Dicey Dungeon has set a new standard.

The music is wonderful as well, perfectly mixing chiptune beats with a game show touch. My only main area of criticism is that the dungeons become somewhat repetitive after a while, some more complex map design could have enhanced the experience. I also wasn't too keen on some of the modern day-references, did we really need an Instagram-influencer witch?

But all in all, Dicey Dungeon is one of the few games since I played Celeste that actually had me getting excited for the medium again. That's all I can ask for at the end of the day.

game notes:

this game's execution is flawless. they stick the landing with the UI, illustrations, and music, yes, but even the execution of the mechanics themselves are fully explored and hashed out, each way equally thoughtful and challenging. this game rules because it's a game about how to think about the game. all the characters are variations on concepts of how to deal with random chance in really cool ways. with each character you hope for different rolls of the dice because you interact with dice differently across each of them. even how you plan out your strategies maps completely differently across the characters. you must constantly think about how to play the game, but the game is in your head is a defined framework, just another part of the flawless design. this game gives me dice dreams. i do not feel alone in this. each chapter's variations are thoughtful variations on the very root of what makes the characters' differences interesting. this game features 'deck building'. dicey dungeons is the most complete exploration of what dicey dungeons can be.

technical notes:

i double dipped. i picked this up on the pc first and then the switch. the switch port is a perfect port. they're both great. pick whichever version you like. hell, buy both like i did if you like it enough and play the game twice. if they put this game out on the ipad, i'd probably buy that version too for some reason (it would be good on the ipad, but i don't know if there is a market for this kind of game on tablets. it's not 2013 any more. like i'm sure that it would get featured in apple's round ups on the front page of the app store for a while but is that enough? then again what do i know?? a few things actually that's why you can trust my great reviews.) ok bye

Few roguelikes really scratch the itch for me when it comes to balancing skill vs RNG for a fun experience, but Dicey Dungeons's tight design and insane creativity makes it the one I've always wanted.

Lady Luck has trapped five adventurers in a stage of perilous dungeons and has transformed them into dice! Can they use their lucky abilities to power through the dungeon and escape? Each character (five + one secret character) has extremely unique ways to tackle each dungeon. Usually each character will have a board of panel abilities they can assign and use with a pool of rolled dice - a rolled die of six might add an extra effect, or odd dice can add shields or inflict status effects. There are a dizzying array of attacks and effects that the player will have at their disposal, and very rarely do they end up with an unworkable deck of abilities.

Each character also brings their own unique form of play to the table, whether it's Warrior's standard board and rerolling, Thief's stealing of equipment and small-die attacks, Robot's Blackjack-style gambling rolls, Inventor's cycling of panels into reusable gadgets, Witch's spellbook of saved spells to cast during battle, and Jester's deck of panels (making it a literal deck-building game!) All these modes have six episodes each with varying twists on difficulty. There are standard hard modes but some bring unique challenges such as a curse, double gadget cycling, or being stuck with every enemy's panels in a stuffed deck of cards. There's even a parallel universe mode where all the status effects work in completely different ways and the game works wonderfully either way.

Minions and the art style as a whole are just a joy to come across - with silly renditions of space marines, baby squids, texting sorceresses, and pickpocketing kids, each has their own quirky personality and unique way of fighting. Bosses vary from bodybuilders to bee women to vampires to Girl Scouts to Aoife and Scathach, with a duel with Lady Luck herself down the line in a final battle that has yet another wildly creative mode stacked on top of it. The music is also supreme, with Chipzel (of Super Hexagon and River City Girls fame) tuning a jazzy and chippy soundtrack that has some of the best tunes of 2019.

Dicey Dungeons is approachable, tightly designed, a joy to look at and listen to and has loads of different ways to tackle Lady Luck's dreaded dungeon. It's easily one of the best roguelikes I've ever played.

After beating it... I was mostly just finishing it to finish it. Not that I didn't enjoy the game, but ultimately, there just wasn't enough variety to warrant 6 episodes per character. I liked the idea of the various types of challenges (parallel universes and stuff), but it mostly came out to just be, not a whole lot special.

The end sequence was lackluster, but honestly, I was vascillating between: 'I wish this was bigger' and 'no, I really don't, I just want to be done'.

That said, the basic concept is fun. If you can grab this for under $5, I'd say it's worth a run. Especially if you can get it particularly cheap, and you're down with dice/card game-esque mechanics. The first few runs will be interesting, it just doesn't bring a lot of new to the table after that.

Also, the ending is not at all satisfying. Not that I was expecting it to be, but it definitely isn't.

Ultimately, I wouldn't recommend spending too much on it, but it's fun enough if you can get it at a deep discount.