Ever since Slay the Spire invented the Roguelite Deckbuilder genre, it has been one of my favorite ways of spending my time. Here have been tons of similar games over the years, and I've tried many of them. Whenever a new one comes out, I'm pretty likely to buy them unless the ratings are really really bad already. There have been some really great titles over the year, but so far, none of them came close to the 347 hours of play time I've gotten out of Slay the Spire so far. To be fair, I don't expect this to change until Slay the Spire II is released, but I've recently discovered another worthy contender that just might be able to get there! Diceomancer is yet another Roguelite Deckbuilder, but it comes with quite the twist!
If you wanted to sum up the core gameplay of Diceomancer, it would probably suffice to say that, well, it's pretty much like Slay the Spire. You build a deck, you upgrade your cards, you collect relics, you fight monsters and bosses across three acts, you unlock new cards and classes, you climb the ascension ladder, and that's about it. In that regard, Diceomancer is already doing a pretty good job, but if that was all then it would just be another game for the pile that I would play for a few hours before moving on to the next title. There's one really cool innovation in there, though, one that no other title has done that way thus far, and that's, as the title of the game suggests, is the use of dice in game.
While there have been some really great games that made use of dice in the past, Diceomancer came up with a pretty unique way of handling things. All classes have a relic that keeps charging as the game progresses. Whenever you want to, you can use two charges to roll a dice once. The result of that roll is then used to alter a single number in the game. The fun thing is, that could be any number you are seeing on your screen right now. Any number Want to change the health of your opponent? Sure, go ahead. Want to change your own health? Sure, you can do that as well. Or you could change the damage your card is dealing, how many cards you are drawing with a spell, how many stacks of a debuff your opponent is going to apply, and so much more.
But it doesn't even end there. The dice can be rolled in any situation. Don't like the price of a relic in the shop? Why not roll the dice to change it? So this relic deals 3 damage to an opponent whenever you play a card? Why not roll the dice and permanently increase that number? An event allows you to look at 10 cards and keep 2? Well, you already guessed it, let's roll the dice and keep a few cards more! The amount of ways to use that mechanic is nearly limitless and with the 10 hours I've played it thus far, I'm still constantly finding new, even crazier ways of abusing the dice.
In fact, the game actively encourages you to try and break it. Numbers are everywhere and all mechanics in the game are governed by skill checks that, once again, require you to roll the dice. Admittedly, it does take a few runs to really settle in with the concept, and during my first run or two, all I really did was just roll my opponents health down so that I could kill them faster. I'm still doing that sometimes now, but more often than not, there are better uses for my dice and I keep getting better at understanding what strategies are possible and viable in any given situation.
To make things more interesting, you also get to change the dice itself. It starts as a D6, but it can be morphed to a D4, a D8, a D12, and a D20. So depending on what you are aiming for, you might want to go with a smaller or bigger dice to make the most of your strategy. On top of that, there are tons of cards and effects that influence the way the dice are rolled. You might get extra rolls and keep the lowest or highest result, manipulate your dice to always roll the highest or lowest possible number, and so on.
In short, Diceomancer offers everything that Slay the Spire offers and then slaps this awesome mechanic on top of everything else, making the game several orders of magnitude more complex but also more enjoyable.
Besides all that, the game itself is really well designed. There are 6 different classes to play and each of them has a very unique playstyle with several different viable ways of building out your deck and what synergies to focus on.
As you can see from my screenshots, the art style is... interesting, to say the least. It's a very simplistic, cartoonish style and I have to admit, it took me a minute to get used to it. Once I had played for a while, though, the style really grew on my and by now, I really enjoy it quite a bit. A lot of the cards have special animations and the whole game just has a very light hearted, entertaining vibe to it. There's a card called Battle of Wits for example, that deals some damage to an opponent. If you want to, you can discard up to three cards for additional damage. Well, if you do, you get an animation of your character throwing books at the opponent before hitting them with the fist. Suffice to say, the game is not taking itself too serious, if at all.
Overall, I'm pretty much blown away by the quality this game has to offer. With 96% positive reviews, it looks like the overwhelming majority of players agree with me on that. The game is only 15€ on Steam and honestly, that's a steal for the amount of entertainment you should be able to get out of it! I highly recommend this game and I'm looking forward to spending many more hours trying to break it in new and creative ways!