Dicey Dungeons Review
It seems to me that for every 10 video games that are released, at least four of them are roguelikes. For those of you who don’t know what that means, it means games that have features similar to the 1980 game Rogue, things like permanent character death and procedurally generated levels. Based on how many roguelikes are released every month, I think there must be something about making a roguelike that appeals to developers, possibly that procedural generation can exponentially increase the playtime of the game by rearranging enemies, items and levels into a huge variety of new challenges. To be clear, I don’t think roguelikes are bad or their developers are less capable, some of the coolest games out there are roguelikes, games like FTL: Faster Than Light, Heat Signature and, most recently, Dicey Dungeons.
Dicey Dungeons is the latest release from indie developer Terry Cavanagh, creator of many video games including Super Hexagon and VVVVVV. In Dicey Dungeons, players control contestants on the world’s hottest game show, Dicey Dungeons. Run by Lady Luck herself, contestants must explore a six-floor dungeon and defeat the monsters within for a chance to win their heart’s desire. Unfortunately for the contestants, Lady Luck doesn’t like giving away prizes and is also extremely into branding, so there’s a twist: all combat in Dicey Dungeons is decided by dice rolls and the contestants themselves are turned into huge sentient dice.
When I say combat is decided by dice rolls, I don’t mean that players meet an enemy and each roll one die to see who wins. Instead, players and enemies have a selection of weapons, tools and abilities that are all powered by dice. At the start of each turn, a number of dice are rolled, players see the results then drag and drop the dice onto their equipment to activate it. The number showing on the die matters when assigning dice to the equipment because different tools have different requirements. Some weapons only work on odd numbers, some only work with a three or less, and some only work if the dice assigned to them add up to a certain number. I like this system because it encourages players to diversify their loadout as they travel through the dungeon and acquire new items to make sure they can use any die they might roll. The equipment variety doesn’t stop there though. Of course, there’s very straight-forward gear that does damage, but there’s also equipment that does different things depending on what dice are assigned to it. For example, there are some weapons that will always do damage no matter what number they get, but on certain numbers will apply negative status effects on the enemy or weapons that do damage on odd numbers but provide defensive armor on even numbers. Then there’s weapon upgrades. While exploring the dungeon, players will occasionally obtain anvils which allow them to improve their gear. Just like the rest of the equipment systems, upgrades aren’t just about doing more damage. Each weapon can only be upgraded once and only has one way it can be upgraded, but there’s still an excellent variety in the possibilities. Many upgrades are about loosening or removing limits on what numbers can be assigned to that piece of equipment, but the upgrades that really impress me are the stranger ones, like making a weapon smaller so that more gear can be brought into battle or by making it so more dice can be assigned to a weapon.
In addition to the gear players find during their exploration, they also have innate abilities which are dictated by which contestant they choose to play as. Each contestant has a passive modifier that changes how that character plays, whether it’s a new mechanic or an additional piece of gear to assign dice to, as well as a “limit break” which is a special move that can only be activated after taking a certain amount of damage. Players start with only one option, the simple warrior, who can re-roll a die three times each turn as a passive ability and a limit break that copies the next action he takes. Players can unlock four more by simply playing a game as the previous contestant. There’s a sixth unlockable character that has an alternate condition to earn them; it’s a secret so I won’t tell you what it is, but I will tell you it’s not very complicated and basically inevitable. Two of the unlockable characters are fun without changing up the gameplay very much, but the other three do an excellent job of giving players new ways to play Dicey Dungeons, including one that I think should’ve been named the “Deckromancer” because their current name doesn’t really match their abilities. But Dicey Dungeons doesn’t stop at that for new ways to play. After beating the dungeon with a contestant, five additional challenges called “episodes” are available with new rules to use with that contestant. This aspect is probably the most impressive of all of Dicey Dungeons’ features. I haven’t seen them all, but the ones I have seen all have interesting twists. My two favorites are an episode where players are able to keep one of an enemy’s weapons after winning a fight if they set aside enough dice and an episode where players are allowed to decide a die’s result but each time they do this there’s a chance they lose a piece of equipment. The creativity shown in these episodes is unquestionably impressive.
The only real downside of Dicey Dungeons is that, beyond the excellent gameplay I’ve already talked about and an fantastic soundtrack, there’s not much else to it. There is dialogue that’s written well, but players only see it at the beginning and end of a game, plus a bit of dialogue from defeated enemies once every 15 - 20 fights. It’s not noteworthy, but it’s also not the point of the game so it’s not a big deal. The art style is a bit like colored paper cut-outs, kind of like early South Park, which is cool but the animations are pretty limited. Again though, this really isn’t the focus of the game.
Dicey Dungeons is a fantastic game design surrounded by above average art, music and writing that would be more impressive if they were’t so close to such an incredible core. Dicey Dungeons certainly isn’t my favorite game out there but it’s still fantastic and worth playing, especially at $15.
Buy this game at full price
It’s worth every penny they’re asking
