Dicefolk
Review
Monster Taming Roguelite
by Camrin Santchi
reviewed on PC
A New Spin
Every once in a while, game developers decide to attempt to fuse popular mechanics into one amalgamation. Sometimes this ends in a shoddy mess that fails to accomplish any of the goals of the combination, but sometimes you get Dicefolk. Dicefolk is a deckbuilding, monster taming roguelite that puts partial control of even the enemies into the player's hands.
Roll for Initiative
As mentioned above, Dicefolk has a lot of moving parts and does a great job of making these parts mesh together well rather than being a blind hodgepodge. The player wields creatures called chimeras against other wild chimera in battles that have a max of three chimera on either side. Players have control over both sides of the field in combat with three dice being rolled for either side, so they have to carefully plan their movements based on the abilities of their chimera as well as the opposing ones, as the turn only ends when all dice on the enemy side have been used up, but players do not need to expend all dice on the ally side. This begets no small amount of strategy, as players need to take hits with certain chimeras and avoid them when possible.
In combat players are also able to make use of one-time use abilities that can provide healing or other effects like buffing their chimeras or debuffing the enemy chimeras. These can be found as loot after a battle but also purchased from merchants, dicesmith, or otherwise acquired. Players only have a limited amount of slots for these abilities, so they must choose wisely how to make use of these lest they end up unable to acquire new ones.
The same can be said for equipment, items that must be equipped to a chimera in order to take effect. These effects are more permanent but typically have some kind of trigger cost, such as making your chimera incapacitated for a turn upon activation (this being the start of battle, rotation, taking damage, et cetera).
Exploration Check
Outside of combat, most of Dicefolk is spent exploring a map by travelling to connected 'encounter' areas - most of these tend to be combat, though there are many others as well. This includes shrines where you can tame other chimeras, shops to purchase talismans or equipment, bonfires to rest at, and many others will be unlocked as players progress. Upon receiving a party wipe with all their chimeras defeated, players will receive 'EXP' that unlocks new encounters, as well as new potential chimera to swap into your team from these shrines. This EXP is based on successful combat encounters, gold remaining, and a few other factors. Players choose at the start of each 'run' a talisman that affects which chimera they are able to recruit from the shrines, and they grow independently of each other, so as players unlock more talismans they may end up preferring certain talismans and the chimeras that they are given access to through them, but it will take time to level their options once they are unlocked.
Critical Success
Altogether, Dicefolk is a successful amalgamation of multiple concepts layered on top of each other in a satisfying way. The only real issue this reviewer could really bring to the table is the game loop feels a bit more repetitive than it does satisfying, but that could just be this particular reviewer's thoughts on roguelikes and as such may not be a reliable view on the loop. Along with this the story and music feel a bit lacking in scale, but again this was likely more of an expectation of an RPG type game rather than a roguelike one.
But with that being said If gamers are fans of any of the concepts that Dicefolk is made up of, from deck building to roguelikes to creature collecting, it is certainly worth a look, if not an outright pickup!
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8.4
fun score
Pros
Interesting Balance of Gameplay Elements, Great Creature Designs
Cons
Repetitive Game Loop, Limited Story and Music
