Die in the Dungeon: PROLOGUE

The original version had me interested in the concept, and I understand this is just a demo, but I have concerns with the game as it stands. I'll be basing my thoughts on the standard run, ending on floor 25, since Endless is always a bit janky in a deckbuilder. Hopefully this is just due to how the demo is structured, but a bigger variety of dice needs to be available from the start. Unlocking dice for runs works, but the variety at the start is way too low and I got tired of them by the time I unlocked a few extra dice. The frog boss seems antithetical to the interesting parts of this game and how you are largely encouraged to build decks. Heavy dice in that fight either clog up your hand or the field and severely limit the options you even get to make. Playing around with your positioning for the purple dice is one of the most interesting parts of the game, and a reason for the game to be dice on a grid rather than a traditional deckbuilder, but you these are barely helpful during the fight. (Not to mention terrain dice which can be a death sentence as the frog will gladly snag those spots.) Also a defensive build can easily take forever before winning since the boss can both heal and create shields. That brings me to my next point. Even pre-Endless I easily got in situations where winning was effectively guaranteed, but it would take ages to execute. A prime candidate are the growth dice, which reward a small deck & stalling. Since purple dice don't scale, this easily translates to simply slamming down a bunch of dice wherever you can repeatedly until your numbers tick up. They aren't the only culprits though. With enemies creating shields, healing, or both, all but the most aggressive strategies frequently lead to drawn out fights. Also, since it is optimal to start the next fight with full health & you may even increase your max health if you're already at full, you almost always get the player flailing around their health dice until full after any semblance of a threat is gone (if they have renewable ones, at least). On a side-note, I have a bit less of a criticism, but more something I noticed. There's very few options for explosive early strategies, while a lot of ways to set up. Growth, Heavy, or even Eternal are based on having benefits over multiple turns. Terrain dice also need to wait at least one turn. Hollow of course means you can do more in a turn, but you quickly reach the hand size limit. Piercing doesn't really matter on the first turn. You about only have the default dice, field attack, and the mirror die for explosive early turns. Meanwhile the enemies don't seem to really warm up, they just come in swinging. This may also be part of why fights feel dragged on. You likely need to scramble to start the fight, but ending the fight is about fighting a weakened enemy with your growth dice stronger, heavy dice giving support, or even eternal dice laying around. Another enemy I would like to bring up is the cockroach. It's just not any fun. I get the concept of taking a different approach to damage dealing, but whether it be your build or luck of the dice, getting an exact amount can be agonizing. Of course after some time they just die anyway as a mercy to the player, but this still is a waste of time where the player can't possibly lose, but has to deal with this pest. The most convenient way to kill them is to kill them in between dealing with other enemies, but their damage dealing is so low priority that this is strictly suboptimal a vast majority of the time. Leading to the player choosing between choosing targets based on threat level or patience. Lastly, I suppose this is your design decision in having to weigh the benefits, but having to pick between adding a die from 3 random ones or another benefit always felt extremely awkward to me. I want to try making different builds, but if I don't find something useful I just wasted my end-of-floor bonus and this encourages me to just stick to the safe options. This is backwards. Players should feel enticed to try out the different mechanics you have to offer. I really wanted to like this. I completed it to make sure there wasn't something I was missing. Die in the Dungeon seems like my kind of game. Hopefully the additional features promised for the full release change my mind, but right now I can't recommend this.