Dicealot Preview | What the Farkle?

I’m definitely a raving fan of roguelike deckbuilders. The excitement of learning a new system is often a fun puzzle with multiple solutions, numerous options, and even a few hidden ways to break the game. After playing the demo for Dicealot, I found an engaging system with a medieval vibe that was uniquely its own.

Dicealot is a roguelike deckbuilder, but instead of cards in a deck, they’re dice in a bag. Drawing inspiration from Arthurian lore, I found myself immediately struck by the beautiful drawings similar to the likes of Medieval scriptures. This Medieval aesthetic is also quickly juxtaposed by an almost old-school computer game graphics with smoother textures. The visuals are something unique that I can’t quite describe, but are so captivating that it’s worth a look.

The demo itself offered quite a bit for me to sink my literal sword into. Though the overarching goal of the game is to bring peace back to Camelot, the demo primarily focuses on the combat.  In order to achieve this, you must combat through several other foes, amp up your power, and maximize all the tools at your disposal. For the purposes of the demo, there was only one character/weapon to start with - Excalibur, which also seems to be the default weapon in the game.

But in order to combat all these enemies and use Excalibur, a game of Farkle takes place. Yea, I didn’t know what that was either. Essentially, Farkle is an ancestral dice game to Yatzee - you roll six dice to form combinations that can deal damage to your enemy. However, if you aren’t able to roll any die that will yield damage, then your turn immediately ends. On the complete flip side, if you’re able to utilize all six of the dice that you rolled, you can push your luck and do it all again. This balance between pushing your luck and having that push fall flat on your face was a big highlight for me.

Layering this on, there were also quest dice that you can obtain throughout your run. These specialty dice become multiplies, conditionals, and boosts to help build your attacking power. For better or worse, there are also possibilities that can hinder your current scrimmage. One quest dice can have four sides of extra damage per attack, but two sides would significantly lower your attacks per turn. This further pushes players to carefully choose when to push their luck and when to be happy with what they have. There were definitely multiple moments with my time with the demo where I rolled my eyes and thought “why did I just do that” as the damage went from 1150 all the way down to zero in a moment’s notice.

Dicealot has a lot of intriguing elements to it. I was eager to see how quickly the gameplay hooked me and how I started to think about how to maximize my playthrough. After a few runs, I was finally feeling confident in the mechanics and grew more and more excited to see the final product. 

You can wishlist the game on Steam right now and grab the full game tomorrow!