Dice Goblin's Den

I had a great time with Dice Goblin’s Den. I ended up liking it way more than I expected. The mix of strategy, randomness, and resource management is super satisfying, and every run kept me hooked. The pixel art is gorgeous and gives the whole game so much personality, and the dialogue adds a lot of charm too. It feels fresh, charming, and really hard to put down once you get into it. Definitely recommend it!

Dice Goblin's Den is a solid tower defense that captures something a lot of modern TDs (especially the gimmicky ones on iOS and Android) just don't. It reminds me of playing TDs back in the Warcraft 3 custom game era, when tower defenses were unique, simple on the surface, fun, and required just the right amount of strategy. I haven't enjoyed playing a TD this much in a long time (I used to be obsessed), and this game delivered bigly. In summary: simple, creative, distinct style, and engaging core mechanics. This game feels like it was made with genuine appreciation for the TD genre rather than as a quick money grab. I highly recommend it and will definitely be replaying it quite a bit.

Starting off, theres 15 waves per stage, with 4 stages, every stage is a random map within a map pool besides last stage which is always the same map and opponent. Minmaxing is *required*, not optional. Stats ------ Theres stats in the game but theres barely 1 stat on average thats useful to the goblins. Theyre all explained ingame on mouseover, except wis, which raises perception which does.... no clue. - Does it make the goblins see further? What does it help a melee goblin if its range is melee anyways? - Actually useful thing it gives 5% healing for healers only (wis, not perception). Heroes also have stats, but you cant see them except when you start a new run and when you win a stage. - This is especially annoying when theres keepsakes (upgrades, more on this later) that doubles the stat bonus of one of your heros stats. Goblins start out on 10 all stats, bards buff +2 all stats, max cap is 20 (22 with bard) which you can get to by upgrading with valuable resources, (if the goblin dies, too bad, rip resources) and debuffs lower them by -10. RNG Hell ----------- RNG buff /debuff on every turn, can only be influenced by 2 rare keepsakes, and the effects you can sometimes select with another RNG selection. Random keepsakes at random times - Some keepsakes raises chances for upgrades, but its unclear how much, or how much the base is, ie Is the base amount 10%? 5%? 15%? How much is it raised? 5 , 10 , 20 , 50 , 100%? - Some keepsakes raises chance for quality to go up, same uncertainty - Some keepsakes raises chance for unit upgrades to show up, same here Unit upgrades can either pick between what you can buy on the side with resources, *or* pick from the pool of upgrades that is RNG-only. - On this note, upgrades does not actually upgrade the unit, but rather add another variety - Most variants are not worth despite being rare, example being the silence wizard; It stops casting fireball and instead casts a silence projectile that doesnt pierce, hits melee units too, and cant be cast if your wizard gets silenced either (seen this specific variant only twice) - Theres a unit upgrade for the bard to provide attack speed instead of stat buff, but theres also a keepsake that increases the attack speed of *all* units while you can keep the stat buff at the same time... even though its rare, it feels at the same time like something leftover. Random maps have different resources which can seem fine initially, except if theyre in a row due to how the workers behave. - On that note, workers on the map, and workers in the resource tab have the same name, and there are keepsakes that upgrade workers, making it unclear which ones are which (at least early on). The stage worker will be in the way of places you can put combat goblins, most of the time (sometimes ive been able to place a combat goblin and resource goblin in the same spot, but thats probably a bug) and will only grab the nearest resource that its targeted for. Hence if you see multiple resources in a row, you must put multiple workers there in waves, as most often theres only enough space for one worker at a time, if you want combat units too, to survive the wave. These worker goblins will also be targeted by any melee units coming first in a wave, making some resources very hard to attain unnecessarily. The stage worker, additionally, only works *during* waves, and when its finished, it poofs away. Resource workers are useless on wave 14, as any resources gathered wont carry over to the next stage. Feels very random on what mobs will pass by the tanks and what wont, 3/4 will just run past it UI ------- The building menus overlap the hero spells if you dont close them. The upgrade menus are annoying to unlock every run so i can remind myself what i can and cant upgrade with what resource. Even though the button exists, you cant refund scaffolds if they end up misplaced or unused. Unclear goblin ranges, some have specific lines, others dont; - Bard, 3x3* (actual range 5x5) - Cleric, 1x1+1 (can heal between squares and incentivized to do so) - Upgraded Cleric, 3x3 (3x3 with a sketchy range, could be 4x3 if you intentionally space your goblins different) - Witch, unknown, looks like 6x4 from trial and error, (4.5 squares only clips the tall enemies) Hexing/sleeping enemies Hex (spell) doesnt work on any type of full or half-animal, which is about half of the enemies. Hex (unit) on the other hand seems to work fine, but is pretty expensive to get set up unless youre lucky. Sleep works until they get hit by anything, which is great until it isnt; - Any summoner will break it with bird or their %rng boar - Any projectile flying too far by missing the intended target that may have just died from other dps Other ------ Ogres hit hard and can be worked around; Specific frogs on the other hand [brown-hat-spell-frogs], oneshot goblins despite how juiced up they are with no counter besides high range dps or sacrificial goblins. Most frogs either use their weapon or lick their targets doing heavy damage so it can be hard to pick the special ones out. One of my best runs got ruined this way, multiple frontline tanks were juiced up with multiple maxed stats each and pocket healers (which took most of the stage to set up) and then they got slorped up, backline proceeded to get wiped out (as they were all dps), and base got wiped from 85% to 0%. - Extra note, this was on a map with multiple entry points, so one tank each side Beat the game with the special dice, but only got it on the last stage and then didnt count.... gotta have it from the start then, i presume, but cba Very rough, 9/10 runs end in disaster on stage one, even with most meta upgrades, which also only really helps start setup. The music is neat, and loops nicely. The art is also great and pretty varied. Edit: Typos

I bought this game on a whim because I liked the theme of Goblins being the "good guys" for once against those pesky "heroes" It took me a good twenty minutes to get the hang of what's going on (I'm never good at follow tutorials) but once I got the hang of it, I was hooked! I played a few rounds and I'm getting a bit addicted. My wife is getting mad at me because I keep playing Dice Goblins instead of giving her attention!

This is a cute game. Love the art especially, music is a chill vibe! Love the playful nature of the story telling. Overall a chill way to spend the afternoon.

Ngl I picked this up because I really liked the cute pixel art. As someone who does not play tower defense games, this was quite the challenge for me. Once I figured out my strategy (don’t sleep on alchemists) and actually paid attention to the tips from the dev in the corner I got into a good rhythm and started getting somewhere. I also was happy to find that once you unlock the different in game hirelings, they stay unlocked in future play throughs. I thought I was going to have to re-unlock them every time I failed(and believe me, I failed ALOT). Now that’s kind of know what I’m doing, I’m determined to unlock all the characters (even though I’m still pretty bad at it).

After playing this game for a little more than an hour, I can tell that this is something I'm going to enjoy many upcoming nights playing. I've only scratched the surface, but the game is addicting if tower defense games are your style. Definitely recommend.

Takes some time to get used to. It's definitely a slow burn. It has an overall progression system which is the main objective so you can survive for as long as possible. After that you find yourself with more resources and flexibility. Takes some time to take off and let you experiment more. But it does have some unique fun ideas.

very fun hard as hell and enjoyable wish the progress to unlock was a little clearer and more things to spend dice on but otherwise an absolute banger

I don't typically play this genre of game, but I had a lot of fun with it. It took a little while to figure out what all the roles do and how you can synergize them with others, but once I did, it was pretty smooth progressing through the stages. Dice Goblin's Den is def a good game for when you wanna turn your brain off to the world.