Introduction
Dice Gambit is an in-development, tactical, turn-based, strategy game with dice, taking place in a neo-renaissance metropolis inspired by Southern Europe. The game sees you leading a cast of different characters in several battles against the mysterious and hostile Chromatic monsters infesting the city! This review will cover the Combat Demo, which includes 6 missions and dialogue for the tutorial.
Developer: Dice Gambit
Released: TBA
Price: TBA
Platforms: Windows
Available on: itch.io
Engine: Unity
Okay. Let’s roll the dice.
Dice Gambit is broken up into player and enemy turns, with each player turn beginning by rolling personal dice for each character and shared dice for all characters to use. However, unconventional dice are used, with each side representing an action: Attack, Defense, Movement, Signature, and Chroma (or Cursed Joker). Signature rolls let you use a given character’s special abilities and Chroma allows usage of any action at the cost of corrupting your character. In case the rolled actions aren’t in your favor, you can reroll your undesired dice up to three times.
Basic dice actions can then be combined further into special abilities, which include protective shields that explode at enemies at the end of their turn, powerful dash attacks, and more. This is in addition to unique passive abilities such as free throwable daggers or extra defense at the start of the turn. As your characters level up, you will choose which new passive and active abilities they will learn, letting you adapt them to your preferred playstyle and maximize their potential.
Dice Gambit does include some variety in its mission through its objectives, such as killing all enemies or escaping the area, meaning you won’t be bored! That said, I found that locking basic movement to the roll of the dice to be extremely limiting and not fun, especially when long-range enemies target you and you’re out of rerolls.
That’s an interesting world.
Dice Gambit’s art style is gorgeous, from the character designs and their varied expressions to the moving elements in levels such as flags and birds. All of which gives the game its unique aesthetics when combined with its setting, which combines South European renaissance architecture with technology such as screens.
That said, the Combat Demo isn’t exactly polished when it comes to enemy art, with some monsters completely missing spawning animations, hopefully, this would be rectified in future builds. The music is also not exactly the game’s strongest suit at the moment, with one or two tracks played non-stop, though they are otherwise non-intrusive. There are also some spelling and grammar errors throughout the game.
In Conclusion
Even though there isn’t much in the way of the plot, the Combat Demo for Dice Gambit is quite promising with its unique dice-based gameplay and distinct art style. The variety of missions, interesting character designs, and mechanics mean the game is accessible to casual players whilst appealing to turn-based strategy aficionados.
Still feeling dicey? We’ve got more turn-based dice strategy game!
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