Dice-builders are fast becoming a genre all of their own, I think, and the latest entry in this burgeoning niche of roguelite game design is DiceVaders, a sci-fi sequel by StarVaders developer Pengonauts, and the new object of my affections.
What is DiceVaders?
If you thought that DiceVaders would be just like its predecessor, StarVaders, you’d actually be quite wrong. DiceVaders ditches the deckbuilding and the Space Invaders-inspired back-and-forth of the original, and instead rolls with dice, aliens, and engine building.
Instead of defending the Earth from another angry army of alien invaders, in DiceVaders you are the army of angry alien invaders. You’ve arrived at the doorstep of your mortal enemies, those perky Earthlings, and you’re ready to obliterate them.
You do this by building an army, reinforcing and strengthening it, and supporting it via a growing collection of artefacts that help you boost the efficacy of your various attacks and synergies.
Building a war machine
Each unit you recruit has a strength value, which equates to damage when activated. There are loads of artefacts that you can equip to boost this strength-damage, but these vital tools are linked to particular columns, one for each side of a die.
Positioning in DiceVaders is half the game, because everything is settled via the roll of a D6. Well, several dice, actually. So when you’re rolling and manipulating dice with your abilities, you’re activating the different columns of your army and bringing their attacks to bear.
There are so many synergies to unlock and explore in DiceVaders, so much so that it can be tricky to work out exactly what is going on, especially while you’re learning the ropes. Each playable character has its own unique special ability, giving them some differentiation, and you can level these characters up over time, too.
Each commander’s strengths can be reinforced via the six main artefact slots, although as rarer items come into the drafting pool, you may want to drop some of your common artefacts. Naturally, a big part of your strategy comes from the new units that you enlist via the shop.
The units you recruit are your core fighting force, and there are even more synergies waiting to be unlocked based on how you arrange them in relation to each other. There’s also an element of sacrifice required, as you must destroy your frontline units to level up those behind them. This churn ensures that you’re never able to rest on your laurels, especially as your target score also rises each round.
Is DiceVaders a worthy sequel?
One of the things that I like the most about DiceVaders is how developer Pengonauts has been brave enough to do something quite different with this sequel. This is not StarVaders 2, but the link between the two games is still strong, and I love the fact that the main bosses here were playable heroes in the original.
DiceVaders is quite chill, as far as roguelites go, and I’m a big fan of the colourful, cartoony aesthetic, too. This is a game with oodles of personality, and if you can look past the fact that your gameplay goal is to exterminate humanity and destroy Earth, I think it’s really cute.
There are ten playable characters/commanders and a series of chapters to work through, with each one adding new gameplay wrinkles for you to overcome. When you step back, you can see that there’s a ton of depth here, but to their credit, the team at Pengonauts never lets the mechanical complexity of the scoring system get in the way of the fun.
DiceVaders is out now on PC (Mac and Win), and I played the game via access kindly provided by the game’s galactic overlords at Playstack.
