#wordsandstuff

“I never knew I would fall in love,

in the sunlight,

on the Thames.

Its strange, the concept of a friend.

“They’ll be there for you, till the end”

But what if my experiences taint the friend?

What if they cringe and recoil from the cries of help I send?

What if I’m darker than they can comprehend?

I have seen what happens when the darkness spills over to them.

"Fighting against fortune would be a lot easier if you weren't a walking dice."

WARNING!! IF YOU READ PAST THIS POINT BEWARE!!! MANY TERRIBLE DICE PUNS ARE ABOUT TO ASSAULT YOUR BRAIN!!!! (some knowledge of dice rolls may be needed to fully appreciate certain references)

Think you know dungeon crawlers? One after another, all the same old game but just wrapped and packaged slightly differently? Well it's about time that trend was broken and I think I've just found the winning contestant. Allow me to introduce you to 'Dicey Dungeons' - A Dungeon Crawling game show where everything depends on the roll of the dice ... quite literally.

Now, I know that with the amount of DC's out there I'm gunna need to do some serious convincing so let me start from the beginning as, after all, it's generally a very good place to start. As it goes, beginnings typically have introductions and ours is given by the hostess of the evening - The rather brutal Lady Luck. A wise word to all contenders - Beware this keeper of fortune, for she is not all that she seems.

Speaking of contenders, let's look along the board and inspect our players. 6 entities, 6 dice, 6 different playstyles. Seeing a pattern yet? No? Well let's see if I can help clear up those snake eyes. Each of our rolling stones have their own unique playstyles, with some differences being as small as a slight skill variation and others being a total upheaval to the standard gameplay style. My advice? Stay away from 'Railroad Nine' if you want to have a simpler time!

I guess i've been a bit vague as to actual gameplay so let me enlighten you a little. On each floor map you spawn on a random tile, surrounded by either Monsters, Health, Chests, Merchants and/or the exit door. Now, depending on your playstyle you could go the quickest, most direct route possible and ignore 'optional' enemies and chests etc., or you could explore every path and interact with everything on the level. Either of these ways could work, but bear in mind that if you play in a hurry, you may be dead before the dice hit midnight.

Okay, okay, so I might be getting a little carried away with all these puns but they just roll of the tongue! Anyway, back to the game at hand. After each encounter with an enemy, you gain experience towards levelling up , providing you've won the battle of course. You can also gain a maximum health increase, a random reward (extra die/weapons/skills) and some very valuable coins. What can you buy? Well, we shall come to that shortly. Backtracking a second to those chests I mentioned, you've got all sorts of weird and wonderful goodies to potentially be found; From weapons/skills to item upgrades and a few other little perks that i'll leave for you to discover. After all, it's no fun if I give away all the secrets on the first roll of the dice!

Right then, about those coins you're so eager to spend. You'll come across two different types of caravans on the map; One is a merchant, one is a blacksmith. The merchant will allow you to buy skills, weapons, health or upgrades (redirects to the blacksmith) whereas the Blacksmith allows you to improve on your attacks. This may sound rather simple but theres one minor detail you need to keep in mind ... your bag is limited. Why would this affect things so much? Well let me explain.

Your backpack consists of 20 slots, I know, sounds like a lot. However, you can only equip up to 6 items at a time. Still not seeing an issue? Well what if I told you that all your items are different sizes ... yep, you read me right. Some items take up two slots rather than one, meaning you're going to have to compromise between the amount of skills you have against the strength of the skills you have. Not so simple now is it.

Moving forward a few rolls, things start to get a little dicey. Dungeons typically have bosses and this is no exception. After climbing through several floors, you get to battle one of the many brutes of the realm, each of which have their own special skills and their own quirks. All I can say is good luck, your going to need as much of it as you can get.

After an initial run through with each character, things begin to start unlocking all over the place. For starters, a challenge hall full of enemy profiles which, in my opinion, are well worth taking the time to read through as there are some pretty funny lines in amongst it all. Next, an episode room where we start to realise this game is a lot bigger than it initiialy seemed ... as in, 36 episodes bigger. And to finish up, a suprise spin the wheel game at the end of each episode ... what more could a young diceman want eh?

I realise I havn't given my usual half essay on settings etc. but this is one of those games that doesn't really need much saying in that regard. Even so, I guess I should at least do this properly and give you the general gist. The entire game artwork appears to be all hand drawn, and I must say, very skillfully at that. It's light and easy on the eyes and keeps the game playable for longer before burnout which, for me at least, can be a major issue if a game is too dark or too heavy on the graphics side of things.

I can happily say that this Dungeon crawler is tab friendly, with options for Fullscreen or windowed, and seperated audio levels for music, voice and sfx which is always a happy find. An unexpected detail I found whilst browsing the steam store page is that this game supports 6 different languages. Not a big deal for those of us that aren't bilingual but I can appreciate the effort that goes into little extras like that. Speaking of extras, a cool little feature I found is that, as you unlock each combatant, the title page changes slightly ... how? Well that would be telling.

Now, this is where I hand in my dice and say goodnight as, although theres plenty more I could delve into, I feel the rest is best discovered by playing for yourself. 'Dicey Dungeons' definitely has a lot more to it than meets the eye on first glance and it's well worth sinking some time into, especially if your an achievement hunter/completionist as steam has 53 achievements, seperate to the ingame unlocks. Each time I re-launch the game to double check something I seem to lose hours discovering new and intriguing gameplay so that's got to count for something ... right?