DAICE

Tactical dice combat with solid roguelite progression. Fuel management, chip synergies, and weapon overcharges make each run feel different.

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TLDR get this game if you're into space roguelikes - you lose nothing as there is a demo for you to try. It was hard at first for me to identify exactly WHY this game is addictive. It tickles the appropriate dopamine areas in your brain and after a while I think I found it. You play as a ship sent across space missions which have 7-16 rounds of combat across 4 Acts, and each mission has a Normal-Hard-Difficult level (used for credit rewards and not for completion) - this structure gives the game a good amount of replayability. You can choose from 5 sets (4 in each group) of faction ships, each with their own perks like piercing, spread fire, burn ticks and explosive damage. I would say 25% of the fun comes from exploring and unlocking new ships to see what works and being surprised that some setups work well in some situations. Each ship comes with a grid-based inventory layout, and another portion of fun is upgrading capacity and trying to fit your equipment using Tetris-like positioning to find the most damage-output setup for the run. Since upgrades come almost every turn (and also you're not limited to just one selection but can randomly choose 1-4 upgrades) your attention is then focused on the more pleasurable aspect of tweaking your ship's hardware. HALF of the fun comes from the upgrading. What sets this game apart from other (space) roguelikes like FTL, Breachway, Die in the Dungeon, For the Warp, Cobalt Core and Slay The Spire is that upgrades come fast and plentiful. For example Cobalt Core (another very good space roguelike) the fun was bled off in trying to get upgrades that actually sync or mesh with what you're trying to achieve - in Daice there are no costs, paths or tedious game mechanics that mess with having to get upgrades in the first place. In fact the most fun missions are the boss missions, where you travel through 9+ rounds before you meet the boss and before meeting the boss ship EVERY ROUND IS AN UPGRADE ROUND, meaning the dopamine hit of getting upgrades and then applying them to your ship is so fun without having to slog through secondary enemies - this is by far the most pleasurable aspect of the game. Combat is a balance of selecting which path or 'lanes' your weapons should be in (similar but very simple and not as tedious as Cobalt-Core), and using dice to power up your modules, power-ups and guns. Enemies are scalable and in my first playthrough they scale up nicely. You might hit a wall once or twice (where you might have to farm certain missions to get credits to buy a more powerful ship) but these are brief and I had fun doing it - unlike other roguelikes where achievements are attached to ship unlocking, or they force you to farm for an unbelievably long time. Are there bugs? Yes, but wait... Of the hundreds of Steam games I own I think this is the 3rd game where the developer is active on the forums and strives to investigate and clear bugs as soon as they are found (you can check my posts in the forums to see this yourself). There are some bugs, but none game-breaking - all of them will simply involve closing the game and opening it again. I can safely say by the time you get this game all the negative reviews about bugs (and the 5+ bugs I found) would have been fixed already (some were fixed overnight, including a feature request to have a lower screen resolution). Speaking of lower screen resolutions, this game runs fine on my potato 13 year old laptop with no dedicated graphics card and 4GB ram, meaning Steam decks, emulators etc should have no issue. It is one of the best optimized games I have seen written in Unity. Did you know there is a demo? I'll repeat this again THERE IS A FREE DEMO - play the first Act I and see for yourself why this game is special and a worthy contender to all the other (infinitely more popular) roguelikes. It may take you 3-4 games to get into it, but once you get the feel of the mechanics, round quirks and upgrades you'll have fun in no time. Quick non-spoiler tip: Never waste your dice - always use up dice to fuel up, fire a non-fired gun to gain overcharge charges, or add electricity to your ship. This can make as much as 30-40% difference to the success of a run and many players ignore this. EDIT: I've completed the game after 53+ hours of fun. On my potato old laptop the video bug is still there but a lot of bugs have been fixed since then. Good hunting.

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This game is a hidden gem as one of the yotubers put it and it is. It is a turnbase tactical game with ship inventory management, where you are manipulating D6 dices to attack eniemies with ship weapons and subsystems. You are going through set of missions upgrading your ship along the way. It's roguelike with slight roguelite elements. Oh and soundtrack is really nice too, a kind of techno-ambient very fitting for the game setting. I hope the game will get the audience its deserving.

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Dear obsession, you turned my couch into a hype factory. I measure a day by tiny joys and punchlines. 9.5/10—would binge again.

A fast-paced space action game where you command a fleet of starships, relying on tactical wisdom—and a bit of luck, as randomness introduces a significant element of surprise to the battles.

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