Dicey Dungeons

game good

great game

Dicey Dungeons is one of those games where you could say it tried to both innovate too hard but lacked enough depth to feel like a good experience. Let's start with the positives, the game has a charming art style, decent music and 4 characters which play quite well. The warrior is just solid, the thief has combos to synergise, the robot has a unique dice rolling mechanic and the jester is just fun chaos, especially when a snap happens and you go nova. Even the final battle has its charms to feel like a fun way to bring it all together. In terms of the neutral the premise is so-so. Your characters have signed up for a dungeon themed game show to win a lifelong wish, you are then increasingly trapped by never being able to leave thanks to Lady Luck being your opponent, perhaps they should have thought this through. It's okay, average even. Enemy design is also so-so, there are plenty of good fights and some which clearly needed a balance review (Looking at you Snowman) as enemy RNG for rolls tends to be incredibly swingy. You either get a complete buy as the enemy fumbles with dice that will never work, or they will completely blast you to death in a single turn/ put you in a position where retaliation is almost impossible. Now for the negatives, the game drags on hard. You have 37 mandatory levels to complete, each lasting a 6 floor dungeon with a boss at the end. This gets stale very quickly, especially since once you have done 4 runs or so you've pretty much seen almost all the game has to offer. Let's also talk about two bad characters, the Inventor and the Witch. The Inventor is easily the worst character, if only because their passive means they throw their items away after every combat, and this is randomised between 3 pieces of equipped items. This is incredibly annoying as the only way to fix what is removed is through a scrap item and you are not guaranteed to get one at the moment you're forced to remove one of your core build items. Many a run ended because of pure bad luck. Next is the Witch, in a heavily RNG dependant game where items, rolls and enemy attacks all have a random element, the Witch is a character which adds several more layers of randomisation through their spell list. Firstly the spell you find is random and is added immediately to your spellbook, taking a slot from 1-6 corresponding to a roll you need to add to the equipped slots, this wouldn't be so bad if you could rearrange which spells are in which slots but no, you must place it at the moment of the spell, meaning it may end up biting hard when another spell which would better appreciate the slot comes along. It's also a very slow character in a game which favours ending fights fast, as you need to roll for the spell you want, sacrifice the dice to put it on the field, then use another dice to activate it, which depending on the spell you may not even have the right dice to use it until later. This tends to mean the chip damage it accrues tends to be lethal over time with little way to account for it. Now let's talk about some of the levels, they range from 1-6 for each char plus a final fight. 1 is your standard match, 2-3 are modified challenge levels, 4 is a tougher level 1, 5 is a complete upheaval of known rules and 6 is a level 1 with random modifiers. The main issues tend to stem from levels 3, 4 and 6 for each character as they range from okay quirky settings to wildly unfair. The Inventor in particular suffers heavily during their rounds as they already have trouble maintaining a run without modifiers making it harder. Their round 3 in particular is one of the worst challenges in the game, as it adds durability to all equipment and it is incredibly easy to simply run out of damage to even play the game. The only plus side is there is a "Relaxed mode" in the settings which does not affect achievements or challenges and it nerfs enemy max health. The only thing is it feels necessary for Witch and Inventor to avoid getting steam rolled in their later levels. It's just not great design in those last bits. Overall I think if they had kept the characters to the 4 with decent design it would have been a good experience as it would have been just long enough to not overstay its welcome. As it stands it's too long and subject to RNG to even consider recommending. I finished it out of spite more than anything else at the end and I can't say that the ending justified the experience any.