Dice With Death

Good fun and challenging!

Deck verified like THIS is crazy.

one of the best rouge likes I,ve played

Well, it turns out that playing games with Death can be quite fun. Playing as one of four unique characters, each with three approaches to building up a deck.... erm set of dice and relics, against a Death who is more than happy to grant you some boons whilst at the same time tipping the balance against you as the game progresses. Even a bad run can be saved with the right relic, whilst at the same time you are never entirely safe from cruel RNG. Runs in the main game are short so you can just go again if you stumble late on. The game modes - an rather inventive eternal mode and an asyncronus PvP - that have been implemented towards the end of the development add variety. But mostly I like the game because my suggestion of a round counter during Early Access was implemented, which basically makes me a developer. 10/10, would Dice With Death again.

Fun Farkle-like game. My only complaints are lack of information on how to play, took a bit to figure out witch. Then tooltips broke when hovering over her spells halfway through a game so I had to guess what her spells did. Other than that it's pretty fun if you like dice games in general.

Put about 26 hours into this game. Really addicting and fun in terms of building different dice sets and strategies to take on Death. Can get repetitive at times, but still a fun game. Would recommend if you love deckbuilding or dicebuilding kind of games.

[b]3.5/5[/b] not the strongest game in its genre but what it lacks in gameplay it makes up for in oodles of atmosphere and a good amount of variety. [b]pros:[/b] •beautiful art style and art direction every element is gorgeous down to the smallest UI there was a lot of work put in and it pays off the atmosphere is off the charts •very easy to pick up and get into a run because theres not a lot of pregaming while choosing the player and difficulty and the decisions you have to make in the beginning of a run are random so theres not a lot of choice paralysis •the dialogue between death and all the playable characters I like being able to choose little options even if they have no actual impact. I much prefer that to only reading through the dialouge. and even the options themselves reveal a good deal about the character’s mindsets. I also like being able to slowly learn about the characters lives through this and even learn a bit about death and his own previous games and history with all the various relics and dice. the writing while infrequent is really great with all of the characters having unique personalities (including death himself) that makes the infrequent banter between them and death very engaging it adds just enough story to help the atmosphere of the game and make every new unlock just a little bit more exciting •very varied gameplay between each player option. each grave has completely different rules in how they play which makes playing and beating each one well worth it at least for the first circle. •every relic and dice option adds a big impact to the combo strategies you can preform. getting just the right combo like Cassandra’s tongue with herbal dice always feel satisfying when you pull it off [b]cons:[/b] •very repetitive gameplay, not helped by a lot of animations. the animations are pretty but after the first time of seeing the effect I honestly don’t need to see it every single time I roll the dice. the animations for the effects are also relatively simple so their continued use wears off very fast. I would prefer to have infrequent but unique effects like the varied effects of the adventurers 10 foot pole activating various traps over something like the breastplate which is a simple rolling shield every single turn. some kind of option to have the animations only show up the first time they happen in a round would be great. obviously being a deck builder its going to have some level of repetition, but its the fact that the rounds take so long and there's hardly any break or change up in between rounds that makes it start to drag on. the dialogue scenes helped this greatly but even those wore off as more unlocks meant less dialogue between rounds as well. other games of this genre prevent this problem by having something that switches up the game between rounds like shop phases or boss rounds. while I can understand why this game doesn’t have something like that, I think there could be something that would break up the gameplay enough to not make it like its dragging on. I do think its a missed opportunity that death has certain relics that let him upgrade his dice but the player has no such mechanic themselves. •completing a run successfully and losing a run have the exact same ending screen it makes it feel like a lackluster accomplishment. especially in a game with such wonderful art direction it feels odd that this doesnt have any special care to it when its supposed to be an emotional moment for the player. even a outline or silhouette of the chosen grave crossing over the water would be a satisfying improvement of an ending screen when you win. •a lack of meaningful meta progression, most of your rewards for completing a run are used for the eternity mode and the pvp mode and if you’re like me and don’t care about the eternity mode and pvp then its largely useless to you. •not much of a point to the higher circles. besides unlocking the witch and getting enough obols to get the adventurer. they also didn’t feel like significantly different modes. I couldn’t tell you the difference between the third or fourth circle if I tried. they all felt about the same level of difficulty with the only difference being having to manage poison in some of them. [b]neutral:[/b] •very rng reliant. while theres a ton of combos that can benefit you, what combo you get is purely decided by what death offers with absolutely no way to influence this or change up your dice or relics to work more in your favor later. you can reroll and banish these options a limited amount of times which I don’t consider a meaningful influence since its still chance what death pulls on those rerolls too. no skill is really needed either as the rolls are again just a click of a button and have no additional element to influence the game. you also cannot manipulate the faces of the dice themselves either to influence gameplay. I consider this neutral because this is a matter of preference some people enjoy more rng while some people enjoy a higher skill ceiling the witch grave has the most amount of skill gameplay and requires a bit more strategical thinking thanks to the spell book and most of her relics but in order to get her you need to beat circle two of any grave so you have to rely on more rng reliant graves until then [b]overall:[/b] worth it if you’re a big fan of this genre and itching for a new one. I really wouldn’t recommend this as someone’s first entry to the dice building rougelike genre its also affordable and I think at least worth completing the first circle with each character though unlocking each character does mean having to go to higher circles with some.