Dicefolk

Disclaimer: I've played exactly one full run of this game. That experience led me to have almost no desire to continue playing, but maybe take this review with a grain of salt. On the other hand, I've spent thousands of hours playing dozens of roguelikes, so if that means anything, you can also consider that when taking my opinions into account. This is a well-made game. The designs and animations are charming. From strictly technical and surface perspectives, the individual aspects of this game are all fine. Even good, in most cases. The issues with Dicefolk come from the way the individual elements come together (or fail to); the far less tangible qualities that are critical to a good play experience: It fails in theme and feel. Theme is the easier and simpler of those to start with, so to say it outright, Dicefolk has the visible identity and nominal look of a creature battler/creature collector game. Of course, it's a roguelike, so one naturally understands that their team of creatures is going to be different every run, but instead of otherwise leaning into that identity (giving you lots of ways to train, upgrade, and improve your creatures), instead every creature is an interchangeable part of a game machine, and a core game mechanic constantly has you permanently throwing away earlier creatures in favor of ones you get later. The overall stats and the general power of the passive abilities improves with every area, and the creatures you start with have nothing special going for them, virtually guaranteeing you'll want to trade them out for better options as you go deeper into a run. This feels absolutely terrible. There's nothing specifically [i]wrong[/i] with it from a purely mechanical perspective, but the game actively discourages building emotional ties with your party of monsters fighting for you, and instead treats them like pieces of a machine you're meant to look at with cold isolation. On top of that, while the creatures are visually nice and well-animated, their designs leave a great deal to be desired when compared to industry leaders like Pokemon or Palworld. They lack features that give them a strongly-defined identity, and this issue actually carries over from visuals into mechanics. Many decisions feel like, "Would you like Creature A with 5 Attack and 28 Health, or Creature B with 6 attack and 25 Health? Their passives are vaguely different and neither one is useful to your current build." There just are not enough different types of stats to give creatures meaningful distinction the way you would want. The other place Dicefolk fails is in feel. There is a world of difference between a decision that [i]is[/i] impactful and a decision that [i]feels[/i] impactful. Whether people like or not, decisions that feel impactful are far more important for making a game feel good than decisions that actually are impactful. Ideally, decisions the player makes would be both, but when in doubt, it's far more beneficial to the play experience for them to genuinely feel important than to be important. As you no doubt already see where I'm going with this, Dicefolk is absolutely lacking in decisions that feel meaningful. You can already see it from the way I described choosing between one creature or another. While it's certainly true that many of these decisions can be significant in building a strong party, they rarely feel like this. The fact that the game gives the player an immense amount of control (backtracking within each area map, revisiting shops, etc.) only reinforces this. You leave a shop in Slay the Spire or Balatro, and it's gone for good. In Dicefolk, you can just sit on that decision until later if your current party is already strong enough, and make a better decision later. The game starts off painfully easy in the first run, and while I have no doubt that will appeal to many, it doesn't appeal to me in the slightest. I think, in general, a well-designed roguelike should have enough depth that it can start off very gently (giving everyone an easy way to get started) but should still provide room for challenge and thought within the first run. I just did not feel any resistance from the game. Maybe I was lucky; maybe I had amazing RNG and I'll never know, but I didn't even take damage in the last 33% of the run. The game looks pleasant and has no immediately obvious issues just from a quick look at a screenshot or a trailer, but it fails as a creature battler, makes all your decisions feel horrifically bland, and lacks any semblance of teeth as a roguelike. I take no joy in leaving this review, but I don't recommend it at all.

Dicefolk combines deckbuilder and creature collector to create an interesting experience. At all times, the game makes you feel in complete control: battle is decided by dice rolls, but you decide order of actions (including for opponent). Similarly, uncovering the map is non-linear and you will always see certain nodes (shops, upgrade stations) each run. This prevents a lot of RNG from ruining runs and this aspect is commendable. Unfortunately, despite randomness in creature attributes, equipment you find, etc., all of the runs feel basically the same. I honestly can't put my finger on why but it's probably a combination of a lot of little things. I've completed ~10 runs in different game modes and they no longer feel engaging.

cute little game but of course it's unbalanced and brings quite nothing new to the table..