23.0 hours played
Written 21 days ago
Still in early access, so everything may change going forwards. But its in a FANTASTIC position and is such a good game.
Dice inherently have a lot of randomness to it, making a rogue-like using them fit perfectly. This isn't an original idea, absolutely. It's still allowed to be fun regardless. As you progress you can modify your "deck" of dice with either new die or by changing traits on the dice in your deck itself. And the animations and overall art style is PEAK. I am staring at the animations a lot. Biased, as I do art for a living. But I think anyone will appreciate good art regardless of what your art preferences are.
Runs can be really quick (There's an achievement for completing a run in only 40 minutes), or really long (I like tank builds, so sue me). Everything between the start and the end is incredibly diverse. Lots of different enemy types, lots of status conditions to account for, lots of permutations of the dice you have available, and lots of relics.
However- at a bit over 20 hours in (and at 100% unlocked), it did get really old really fast. Yes there's a lot of status conditions and relics that give you really cool effects! But a lot of the status conditions aren't too impactful in most games. Only effecting you OR the opponent. If it does at all. And really, its all just shifting numbers. How much damage you take at the end of your turn, how much damage you negate, how much bonus damage your dice do. Some are more unique but they're more like counters to keep track of how many extra draws or rerolls you have available. The relics feel (mostly) the same. Some heal you different amounts at different times. Others give your dice bonuses if the face value is a specific number. Others can make you do bonus damage if all dice share a value. They do the core number thing differently across the board and none of them are really carbon copies of anything else. Yet in a fast run, you only have to see "green number go up" and hit send.
The enemy variety is quite nice, but I'd like to see more bosses. Or give them a bit more depth. The chef in the first floor is vastly inferior in complexity to the scorpion rider. The twin assassin beetles on the second floor gives you absolutely no reason to place your die in half of the spaces, as you just have her attack hit harder equal to your roll. Shields are meaningless in those spots, unless you can kill her with an attacking die you just don't gain anything. The mechanics of it fall flat. The queen bee is fascinating with a risk-reward to engaging with her mechanic for a ton of bonus damage, or ignoring her for your setup. I like them all, overall. But just one more in each floor on later updates of the title would do wonders to make runs feel less samey!
Only last real complaint I have is that terms are confusing. Items say they trigger at the end of MY turn or end of THE turn, yet feel like they happen before certain effects that should be after them. Or vice-versa. Effects that boost dice value are different from terrain boosts and different from Boost Dice effects. With Boost Dice not giving any extra boost to the value of dice they're targeting if you boost the value of them. But Terrain Dice modify the boost of items on the space they've boosted. That terrain boost doesn't effect Terrain Dice (you can't cause them to stack on stack on stack every round) but if you target a Terrain Die with a boost die, you CAN alter the amount it's boosting the location. You cannot have a Boost Die lower or alter it's boost effect, but you can alter the boost given to most items with terrain boosts. Yet for terrain boosts, there's two different types. One is permanent on the spot or board. Sometimes shifting location, but always will be a +5 or whatnot for the duration of that fight. Yet terrain boost is temporary, lowering by 1 every turn. Makes understanding what you're doing on the board real frustrating when you're stacking effects on effects on value changes on die modifiers on player choices of where to put what and how to target things.
I should be clear, this is a frustration with learning the game not playing it. Once I took the time to try and understand what was changing and where my assumptions went wrong I had very little issue. Some dev time to make all the terminology more concrete, effects clearer, and dice impact understood easier is something that happens as development goes on. The game they have is absolutely worth the price of entry as it stands right now. Of my 20+ hours, no issue. I can only see it going up from here and I'm excited to see it with more content and more effort to bring it beyond where it's at right now!