Dice Gambit
Last updated: 2025-08-16
- Engaging tactical gameplay with deep abilities
- Stunning art and sound design
- Robust character customization
- Repetitive content and pacing issues
- Frustrating stamina system
- Over-reliance on RNG and dice
Emotions
Players express satisfaction due to the game's engaging combination of dice and turn-based mechanics, often highlighting the satisfying combat, diverse character customization, and effective use of abilities. The appealing art style, strong soundtrack, and overall high quality of the game, including its polish and responsive developers, also contribute significantly to this positive emotion. Many found the game easy to get into and appreciated its fresh take on the genre, leading to an enjoyable and replayable experience.
Frustration primarily stems from restrictive game mechanics, such as dice rolls that limit player agency, and progression issues like steep difficulty spikes and strict time/stamina limits. Frequent game-breaking bugs, softlocks, and optimization problems also significantly hinder the player experience. Additionally, some players found class imbalances, unclear tutorials, and limitations in character customization to be frustrating.
Excitement is driven by the game's overall high quality, appealing art style, and engaging combat and character building. Players are excited by the variety of classes and skills, the potential for future content and updates, and the innovative gameplay mechanics. The game's initial impression and the developers' dedication also contribute to a strong sense of anticipation and enthusiasm.
Disappointment arises when the game fails to meet player expectations, particularly regarding genre fit (e.g., not feeling like a true RPG or strategy game) and progression systems. Common causes include low replay value, lack of new content, repetitive gameplay, and design choices like time limits and stamina bars. Bugs and an unbalanced campaign also contribute to this negative sentiment.
Players experience enjoyment from the game's overall fun and engaging tactical combat, often highlighting the discoverable synergies and character customization. The appealing art style, music, and intuitive combat system contribute to a positive gameplay experience. Many found the game more fun than expected, appreciating its overall quality and potential.
Verdict
Mostly positive
Summary
Positive 77% · Negative 23%. Score: 23 / 100
Positives:
- Players consistently praise the core gameplay loop, highlighting the engaging turn-based combat, unique dice mechanics, and strategic depth. The game's blend of tactical RPG elements with roguelike progression and family management creates a fresh and addictive experience, offering high replayability and satisfying progression.
- The game's distinctive art style, often described as unique, charming, and beautiful, is a major highlight. This visual appeal is complemented by a phenomenal soundtrack and memorable, charismatic characters, contributing significantly to the game's immersive and soulful atmosphere.
- The game offers a vast array of interesting abilities, diverse classes, and synergistic skill combinations. This depth in character building and combat options allows for significant strategic experimentation and keeps gameplay fresh across multiple playthroughs.
- The extensive and detailed character customization options are highly appreciated by players. This includes a robust character creator and the ability to personalize family members, adding a significant layer of player agency and replayability.
- Players recognize and appreciate the passion and dedication of the small development team. Their active engagement with the community and responsiveness to feedback, including quick bug fixes, fosters a positive relationship and enhances the overall game experience.
Negatives:
- Players report that the game's content feels repetitive, lacking in variety for missions, enemies, and maps. This contributes to a sense of boredom and a short main story, negatively impacting replayability and overall satisfaction. The pacing is also described as disjointed and slow.
- The stamina system is a major point of contention, severely limiting character usage and forcing players to manage debuffs. This, combined with high enemy density and limited recovery options, creates a frustrating and exhausting experience that actively fights the player.
- A significant number of players are frustrated by the heavy reliance on dice rolls and RNG in combat and movement. This leads to turns where players cannot perform desired actions, making the game feel restrictive, unfair, and overly complicated, often ruining runs due to bad luck.
- The game suffers from various bugs, ranging from minor visual glitches to frequent crashes and freezing issues. These technical problems significantly disrupt gameplay, forcing replays and contributing to a generally unpolished experience.
- Players find it extremely difficult to level up new characters, especially offspring or recruited ones, as they start at level 1 while missions quickly scale to much higher levels. This forces players to spend gold on upgrades rather than naturally progressing characters.
Gameplay:
- The core of the game revolves around a unique family and inheritance system. Players manage character classes, engage in marriage to find powerful partners, and breed offspring who inherit traits and skills, allowing for strategic family development and strengthening the party over generations. The family tree has a cap, but less useful characters can be retired, and growing relationships with NPCs can raise the family tree cap.
- Combat and many actions are determined by a unique dice-rolling mechanic. Dice rolls represent resource types for abilities, mixing randomness with strategic choices. This system, combined with other RNG elements like inherited stats and level-up options, contributes to high replayability.
- The game is described as an inheritance-style roguelike with tactical turn-based combat. It draws inspiration from games like Darkest Dungeon, XCOM, and Gloomhaven, blending elements of base upgrading, team building, and strategic map adventuring.
- Stamina management is a key mechanic, consumed during dungeon battles and affecting character attributes (bonuses at high stamina, penalties at low). Stamina can be recovered by resting at home or for money, adding a strategic layer to expedition planning.
- The game offers extensive difficulty customization, allowing players to adjust various aspects like money, XP, expedition length, and health. While Act 1 is relatively relaxed, later acts become significantly more challenging, requiring players to adapt their strategies.
Performance:
- There is a reported issue with photosensitive epilepsy due to flashing elements. Players suggest adding an option to disable these flashes to improve accessibility and safety.
- Players appreciate the game's strong performance on the Steam Deck, indicating good optimization for portable play. This enhances accessibility and player convenience.
Recommendations:
- Many players highly recommend the game, praising it as an excellent and fantastic experience. They believe it offers great value for its price and is a must-buy for fans of the genre.
- Players strongly advise trying the available demo, which includes the entire first act and allows save data to carry over. This is seen as an excellent way to determine if the game suits individual preferences before purchasing.
- The game is particularly recommended for fans of tactical combat, turn-based strategy, and isometric RPGs, especially those who enjoy games like XCOM, Darkest Dungeon, or Baldur's Gate 3.
- Many players express a strong desire to continue playing the game, indicating high engagement and anticipation for future content or completing their current playthroughs.
- It is recommended that new players start on a lower difficulty setting to ease into the game mechanics and avoid early frustration, with options to increase difficulty in subsequent playthroughs.
Miscellaneous:
- The availability of a free demo is a positive aspect, especially since progress made in the demo carries over to the full game. This allows players to try before buying without losing their initial investment of time.
- Players desire an endless gameplay option or a way to extend play sessions indefinitely, suggesting a need for more content or a sandbox mode. This would enhance replayability for those who enjoy prolonged engagement.
- Players are looking for an option to speed up gameplay, indicating that the current pace might be too slow for some. A speed-up feature could improve quality of life and efficiency.
- The game offers a substantial amount of content yet to be unlocked, suggesting good long-term engagement potential. This indicates a robust progression system beyond initial play.
- The game's progression system currently relies solely on skills, lacking equipment options. This suggests a simpler progression path that some players might find less engaging or customizable.
