Dicey Dungeonsis a miniature roguelike by Terry Cavanagh, creator of famed indies such asSuper HexagonandVVVVVV. Unlike those reflex-based titles,Dicey Dungeonsis turn-based and centers around rolling dice to activate different abilities.
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The game was successful enoughto earn a free DLC pack,Dicey Dungeons Reunion, which adds an extra challenge for each of the six playable characters. Each one changes the gameplay in new and interesting ways, beyond the already significant differences between character playstyles. They’re all worth trying out, but here’s how they measure up to one another.
6Warrior Episode
For his episode, the Warrior gains a powerful new feature: Workouts, a side deck with one-time use cards. Some of these are powerful attacks or defensive abilities, while others are permanent upgrades (to compensate for level-up bonuses being disabled). These cards add a tactical element to the normally straightforward Warrior, as it forces the player to choose between a regular offense, a workout attack, or an upgrade that temporarily takes dice away from available battle options.
The change of gameplay is pretty interesting, and there’s even an option to train upa powerful Omnislash attackwith some real effort. In the end, though, this episode ends up being a little straightforward for its four-star difficulty rating.
5Witch Episode
Each battle inDicey Dungeonsis a little puzzle, the objective being to cause as much damage as possible using your equipment while keeping yourself above zero health. The Witch’s Reunion episode, however, makes the puzzles even more obvious. Instead of a dungeon like the others, the Witch fights against a single boss enemy that offers a different dice puzzle each turn, which must be solved to avoid taking damage.
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It’s an interesting twist on the typicalDicey Dungeonsformat and is practically a whole different kind of game, but it’s a little disappointing that the Witch, one of the base game’s more complex classes, doesn’t get a real dungeon challenge of her own.
4Thief Episode
The first episode in the pack, and one of the easiest with a difficulty rating of two stars. It’s simple compared to the others and serves as an introduction to all the altered enemy types. The other change is that the Thief is allowed topermanently steal one piece of equipment from every enemy.
Besides being a good preview of the new enemies, which carry over into the other episodes, this powerful theft ability allows players to put together ridiculous equipment combinations assembled throughout the run. The episode is fairly simple, but as an introduction, it works very well.
3Inventor Episode
Another two-star episode. It’s similar to the Thief episode in the variety of equipment given to the player but much harder to control: each equipment item becomes a new, random one after three uses. The gameplay ends up being something in between the tactical conservation of abilities from the Warrior episode and the wide variety of options from the Thief episode.
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Overall, it’s good fun, but its random nature means success or failurecan feel purely chance-based, even for a game about rolling dice. With proper management, it is possible to keep synergistic abilities together, but it’s not actually necessary if the broken equipment rerolls into something decent.
2Jester Episode
In the base game, the Jester has one of the most unique playstyles, being set up like a deckbuilder as opposed to choosing a loadout of equipment. His reunion episode amplifies the deckbuilding significantly. Instead of his usual set of dice, used to activate several cards in one turn, he only receives a single dice that returns after each use. This places full importance on the structure of Jester’s deck, and how the cards interact with one another as opposed to the dice. On top of that, this episode also adds mana, a new consumable resource.
The episode feels like a whole new game, just by altering the focus a little. It’s impressive seeing what a few changes can cause,and the deckbuilding style is a good time besides. It’s just a shame the mana mechanic takes some investment to see any use.
1Robot Episode
From minute one, this episode makes a great meta-joke, removing all the player’s dice mechanics entirely and replacing them with a brand-new coin flip system. In practice, these are just dice that can only roll heads or tails, but their presentation is what sells the mechanic: the player gets to drag little coins around the screen with Lady Luck’s face in place of heads. All the Robot’s equipment is completely redesigned and re-themed to take coins instead of dice. There’s even a silver-to-gold mechanic that, if set up correctly,actually increases the value of the coins themselves, making them more effective in certain situations.
The Robot was already one of the more complex - but still entertaining - classes in the original game. With this brand-new set of mechanics and artwork augmenting an already detailed character, it’s clear that this episode is the best new addition inReunion.
Dicey Dungeonsand its free DLC are available on PC, mobile, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
