There’s lots of fantastic roguelike deckbuilders out there, from the iconic Slay the Spire to new, distinctive offerings such as Balatro. But a real joy of mine has been the rise of the dice-based roguelike – the likes of Dicey Dungeons, Dice and Fold, and the beautiful Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles, which is celebrating a full year since launch by introducing a new daily run feature alongside the ability to build your own custom runs. “If you are someone who likes endless replayability, you will love this update,” developer Little Leo Games says.
Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles follows the fundamental run structure of the best roguelikes in that familiar Slay the Spire mold. The hook is that, instead of a deck of cards, you build up a bag of dice over the course of each attempt. Those at your disposal vary depending upon which of the six playable characters you choose, and each of them ranges from safe dice covered in reliable rolls to riskier options that can offer immense power but only on a couple of faces.
The other critical element is its dual damage types, Purification and Corruption – the former damages enemies or heals you, while the latter damages you or heals your foes. Crucially, you must make use of negative rolls before ending your turn. The good news is that your character’s abilities – or ‘virtues’ – are tied to your health bar, meaning that in some cases you’ll actually want to take damage to make use of them. Achieving perfect balance is therefore key to success.
In the new daily runs, you’ll be assigned a character to play as, but they’ll be given a unique set of virtues and starting dice, creating all-new loadouts to put your skills to the test. Along with this comes a set of random modifiers, designed to “make the run weird in a good way.” Some might offer additional boons, resources, or rewards; others might inflict challenging restrictions upon you; yet more can fill your pool with a huge flood of starting dice.
On top of this comes the ability to make your own run. You’ll be able to select your pick of the modifiers – with more than 40 available to choose from – as well as your character’s virtues from the full list of skills. Opt to find the most broken combo, or go for a random selection and see if you can make it work; the choice is yours. You’ll have to defeat the base game once in order to unlock these two modes, but they certainly ramp up the potential replay value dramatically.
Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles update 1.2 launches on Thursday September 26, alongside its arrival on consoles. You can buy the game on Steam, priced at $24.99 / £20.99. If you’d like to try it first, you can download a free demo to do just that.
While dice are certainly nice, it’s hard not to hold the best card games in a similar regard. Or take a wander among the best indie games to make sure you haven’t missed any other hidden gems.
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