Roguelike deckbuilders have to do one thing fairly particular to face out these days, what with the Slay The Spileup of bangers over the previous few years. Cobalt Core, Wildfrost, Samurai Showdown (if you happen to squint). All glorious, however Diceomancer stands out above even these, due to a intelligent gimmick and a healthy dose of chutzpah. It’s there within the strapline, you understand the deal, however to stress: you possibly can reroll ANY quantity in your display screen.
Your well being, enemy well being, assaults, blocks, buffs, mana, gold – all truthful recreation. The numbers in encounters. On Relics. Have at ‘em! Heck, and that’s earlier than you begin scribbling within the rulebook.
You’ll be able to’t fairly reroll willy-nilly, with every reroll requiring both particular playing cards or a use of a relic that costs up between encounters, however that also means you get to reroll fairly willy-abundantly. Design touches apply simply sufficient brakes to cease that being boring: the pipe-wielding sewer rat in entrance of you’ll have its well being bar divided into chunks, for example, so you possibly can’t simply zap all of it away with one shot. You’ll be able to completely change a card to, say, draw 20 playing cards moderately than 2, however from then on taking part in it would advance the purple mist that chases you on the map between encounters, spelling doom in a lot the identical type as FTL’s insurgent fleet. The One Die relic that powers your rerolls additionally solely begins as a piddly D6, scaling as much as a D20 over the course of a run if you happen to handle to persistently improve it.
Pipe-wielding sewer rats are consultant of the mischievous chaos that Diceomancer embraces at kind of each doable stage, from the encounter artwork within the type of a kid’s crude drawings to the fishing mini-game that awaits on the finish of a profitable run (impacting nothing besides the fish counter on the principle menu). It’s an indulgently playful setting the place multiverse shenanigans go away room for dumb jokes, just like the inclusion of a Hitchhiker’s Information relic that stops you from turning into panicked.
It’s all so vigorous, and all of the extra so due to animations that jazz up many playing cards, exhibiting your fingers firing a pipe-gun into the face of the opposing goose, or spinning the crank on a magically-summoned organ gun. The Vicious Mockery card simply has you waggle your finger at your foes, doing bonkers injury for every key phrase on each card left in your hand. One mark of a great deckbuilder is what number of playing cards make you cease and go “wait, what”, and this teems with ‘em. I can flip each copy of a quantity into zero! I can acquire successfully infinite mana! I can use each card in my hand! (So long as I’ve 13 of them they usually all have totally different names!) I can play a really very indignant frog!
However such wild potentialities don’t make it inconsiderate – you continue to should be thought of, particularly early in a run earlier than you’ve constructed one thing damaged. There are intelligent intricacies to chew on, past simple vitality prices, that deepen the puzzle offered by each hand. The core complication is colored mana: each card requires appropriately colored mana to play, which you get by discarding playing cards of that color. I do some dance at any time when a recreation calls for I spend potentialities as forex, and right here it varieties the spine of a card ‘em up that may be compelling even with out the flexibility to reroll something.
It’s yer good outdated mix of tried and true concepts, fused to refreshingly new ones. (Granted, Rogue Lords already tried the entire UI-hacking factor, however there it felt like a fallback moderately than a continuing consideration). There’s a whiff of Monster Practice’s factions to the category decisions, which you construct from a mixture of colored orbs originally of every run, besides these decks mix themes greater than they do playing cards. The inexperienced orb revolves round summoning useful spirits, however pair it with the blue orb and also you’re the Builder, establishing Da Vinci steam tanks and Dyson Spheres.
Past their playing cards, the courses have skills that may make you view the entire recreation in another way. At first you may see Luck, the place each roll helps you to roll a number of cube and take the best consequence, as a straight buff – and Dangerous Luck, which does the other, as a crippling handicap. However you then do not forget that typically low numbers are good numbers. I hated the Barbarian class, till I realised they’re successfully immortal so long as you possibly can afford to maintain re-rolling their particular damage buffer to solely take a smattering of harm every flip. I even had one run the place I intentionally downgraded my One Die right into a D4, shrinking any scary quantity right into a innocent widdle child digit, grinning each time.
The purpose is that past the novelty lies overpowered nonsense that makes you’re feeling useless intelligent, as if you happen to’re recognizing hacks you possibly can idiot your self into pondering the builders had ignored. Think about cannily rerolling a Relic within the Spire to triple its injury, or its buff depend, or to make it activate ten instances as a substitute of two. When you’ve discovered the place to make efficient cuts together with your One Die scalpel, it turns into a devastating and versatile device – and when you’ve performed sufficient runs to pour the required variety of factors into the perma-upgrade tree, you possibly can crack open the rulebook and draw 20 playing cards a flip. It’s foolish, borderline extreme, however it works.
The value is longevity. On each run it doesn’t take lengthy earlier than I bag myself a fully devastating combo, then simply repeatedly play that. A uncommon, beautiful Slay The Spire run can see you go infinite, drawing sufficient playing cards whereas producing sufficient vitality to infinitely thwack away at no matter poor schmuck you’re dealing with. With Diceomancer I could make that occur on virtually each run, as soon as they get going, typically pasting each monster on the primary flip. Each hand is a puzzle, till you hit the purpose the place you’re so highly effective that the puzzle turns into trivial – you then get pleasure from that for some time, go fishing, and begin afresh.
Or go away it there! It took me round twelve hours to achieve the highest of that improve tree, at which level I’d seen all the pieces and damaged the sport in a dozen other ways. For a lot of, that will probably be a wise stopping level. There are the now-traditional 20 ascension ranks, however the challenges they current don’t escalate rapidly sufficient to offset the bottom issue turning into comparatively simple when you’ve discovered just a few tips. Moreover, honing optimum methods isn’t actually the purpose. Diceomancer isn’t a pit to vanish into for a whole bunch of hours, it’s a neat cave you pop into to see the stalactites.
“Hack the foundations” is an ambition I applaud, and Diceomancer’s execution is pristine sufficient to make me throw in a little bit whoop. Peek into any nook and there’s one thing intelligent or humorous happening: one little bit of card artwork is a hat tip to Dying Stranding, with a person sporting a familiarly boxy backpack tower and armfuls of service baggage. One encounter makes you a participant in a loss aversion research. S’gold.
With nice energy comes diminished replayability, however that’s tremendous. Diceomancer is right here for a great time, not a very long time, and that’s a part of what makes it price yours.
