Hugh J. O'Donnell

Dicey Dungeons
Designed and Published by Terry Cavanagh
Played on Steam

The Skinny: A fun little dungeon explorer that will keep you clicking through just one more run.

Dicey Dungeons is a small, super-indie rouge-like deck-building dungeon crawler. Which is a heck of a mouthful, but it’s a great little game. Trapped on the sadistic game show of Lady Luck herself, six adventurers must fight their way through six levels of random dungeons and turn-based battles in order to win their hearts’ desires, or be stuck as a hapless dice for all eternity.
Dicey Dungeons is a fun little dungeon crawler that really embraces the RNG. Each character, as portrayed by an adorable anthropomorphic die, has six slots worth of equipment and a special ability. These are all powered by random dice rolls. As players progress through the dungeons, they level up to gain HP and extra dice. It’s not too complex, but it feels quite well balanced. The goal is to stay ahead of your enemies, including Lady Luck herself, as the dice will eventually betray you.
And the game can be quite challenging, but music by Chipzel and art by Marlowe Dobbe are both engaging and charming enough that it never feels too frustrating. The show is structured as a set of Episodes of Lady Luck’s show, each running about half an hour long, so I never felt as though I lost too much progress, even if I was almost done when I came up against a fight I couldn’t win.
And it’s just dang fun to play. Every character has their own unique abilities and style. The Robot rolls in a press-your-luck style game, for example, while The Witch prepares her abilities from a spell book. Even the act of clicking and dragging a dice into a slot for an attack just feels fun. While there isn’t the sort of intensity or stakes as in other dungeon crawlers or deck builders like Slay the Spire, it kept me reaching for the mouse of just one more round.
Dicey Dungeons is available for Mac and PC through Steam and itch.io.