Rune Dice

Yes, it's yet another roguelite. And it's got that "Slay the Spire" for some reason patented map that nobody else can come up with a unique idea about. But it's dice. And you shoot them like shuffleboard, or pinball, or Pachinko. And it's roguelite. You select better items and better dice during your run, like the for some reason patented "Slay the Spire" type reward mechanic. And it has standard rogue-lite characters and classes and stuff unlocks to play towards. And it's addicting. At least to me it is, but I have an addictive personality. Shoot dice into other dice. Go for the best rebounds you can, and score big points and kill big monsters. That's all. Way too much gibberish, but enjoy. (gibberish in my review, not in the game. The game is great!)

The music is a bop, the visuals are great. The animations are cute and the sounds do what you want them to do. The game is responsive, the dopamine is there, and the unlocks are paced well and provide a solid sense of progression. Game is fun for a short time but flawed. I will continue to play in hopes that the last unlock I have my eye on shifts things. You need to know I have played on hard mode for about 6 of my almost 10 hours and switched to easy for a few hours to see that all problems are equally present in both. I have a full library and have never considered a game too hard- them's the breaks with roguelites. I'm saying all of that because it will be easy to read some of what's coming up as 'this game is too hard.' That is not the complaint. This game lacks a strong sense of agency after the character selection screen, so I do not feel I lost or won because the game is hard or easy, I lost or won because I was always going to, based on scatter positions. There is some agency, but not much. When the game is 'hard', I am not convinced it was beatable based on what unlocks are available. It is very easy to be put in an unwinnable position. Bigger complaint first, this isn't a dice game, so the marketing is fairly deceptive, but in fairness in promo images if you somehow already know to look closely you will see the issue. There are numbered cubes but they all have the same identical face (a 5 only has 5's, a 3 only has 3s, with no variance I have found in hours of playing). The only real variance is the specific way they are scattered, and your plan is to knock them around billiards style to optimize around the fact that when two matching numbers meet, they merge into the next number and jump towards a cube already showing that number (just look at the marketing gif's and notice each dice only has one face and you'll get how it plays pretty quickly). Face variance for RNG is the point of dice so I can't stress what a marketing mismatch it is. Find me another dice game where the dice is the same on all sides, and I will bet that it does not market itself on being dice-focused. This is a real-time physics based merge game. Call it Rune Merge or something. Some enemies are designed pretty poorly and turn off or nullify what little agency you have. The sand blocks are a massive problem. There is also absolutely no way to play around a creature gaining thorn damage, you just have to hope you haven't damaged it that many times, but your control over the order of the cubes and how they are applied feels like 80% pre-ordained, and ranged enemies will be putting damage on you every turn or every other turn, and the board re-sets after a few throws, so you do not have the luxury of slow-playing on purpose to only hit the enemy with big cubes (the only organically occurring alternative to just deciding to stop attacking and die, for what your board is likely to look like at that point). I've lost runs to a creature that just dealt 6 damage to me every time I dealt 1 damage to it. I had to deal 1 damage to it multiple times to be able to deal 2, then 3, etc. You get 49 health and I spent 24 of mine dealing 6 damage to one giant enemy supporting a boss. Enemies that place their own cubes seem to always place them on the 'frontlines' soaking up a majority of your sightlines so that you don't even feel like you can play around them- you just have to suck it up and hit them to power through constant ranged damage. To give the players agency, there needs to be some way to nudge the table. There are one-off 'dice' that are not rolled or scattered at all but are just clicked on and dragged that do a fairly watered-down version of this, but choosing one always costs a long-term benefit and it is single-use for the entire run. You will give up the chance for another cube, or a cube upgrade, to be able to push some dice together or apart in a small circle a single time. It is not enough for the price you pay. The tone of the whole game mechanically winds up being, "You do not have a choice unless you're intentionally playing badly to feel like you do, by 'choosing' to make failing gambits". The frequency of shop-manipulating items is way too high for a game where you might visit the shop a gluttonous ("choosing to lose") three times during a run max. There is not enough gold or enough shop opportunities for them to ever feel like they paid off. Two things I am still unsure if I am imagining. One is still being tested but the other I just cannot come to heads or tails on. It feels like the higher a dice gets, the less it is willing to travel to join up with its mate. I have had 4's and higher even seem to bounce off each other. If this is in my imagination then there's nothing they can do about that, but if 5's and 6's are limping along by design then this is the closest I've ever come to a 'ruined climax' mechanic in a videogame. Like I said, I will continue playing for a bit to find more of what I like, but the issues are just rough to play around.

такая приколдесная игра, я не могу. самое то мозг отключить и позалипать без задней мысли

This is one of the most frustrating roguelike I ever played. It's cool, it has an unique premise, but the amount of times you get screwed over, going 100% health to 0 in a single run, is insane. Some of the boss powers are stupidly unfun (looking at you, banshee and jester). You get screwed over by dice placement, you get screwed over by random dice jumps, you get screwed over by your own relics. There is no amount of strategy or skill that can overcome some of the battles, in particular in classic mode.

J'adore! L'ambiance est très bonne! Très facile à prendre un main! Plusieurs classes à débloquer, et chaque classe à 3 persos/archétypes qui change leurs façon de jouer! La RNG n'est pas horrible, dans le sens où un lancer de dés bien cadré peut faire la différence. Bref, un très bon jeu que je recommande à ceux qui cherchent un roguelite sympathique!

[h3] "Рогалик с комфортной степенью рандома" [/h3] - 10 некромантов из 11 рекомендуют

Highly enjoyable roguelite/like game. I put several hours into the demo before actually picking up the game. Its much more of a physics game than a dice game, but I don't think that takes away from it at all. It would be interesting to see some dice with multiple faces on them. Maybe DLC?

Занятно, но есть проблемы с балансом. Я последнего босса не могу пройти, у него слишком много урона, который никак не блокируется, с ним еще пара говнюков, у тебя только классовые кубики, в общем как-то не получается. В остальном, очень разные персонажи, прикольные специальные кубики, но сам кубик при ударах живет своей жизнью. Очень трудно предсказывать куда он полетит. Из-за этого контролировать еще один рандом сложно. Но поиграть стоит, особенно если брать по скидке.

This is a snooker not a dice game.

I played the demo and I was hooked. I am so glad they added classic mode and a lot more achievements. Great for steam deck and PC play :)