Summary
- Dice can be used in digital games to create unique mechanics and add controlled randomness, allowing for fresh and interesting gameplay experiences.
- Games like Die In The Dungeon and Dicey Dungeons use dice to fuel their combat systems and allow players to strategize and build unique decks or characters.
- Dice Kingdoms and Luckitown combine resource management and strategy with dice rolling mechanics, adding depth and replayability to their gameplay.
Dice have long been a part of game design, and as the original form of random numbers in games, they have arguably influenced much of the RNG present in the modern-day landscape. Although dice are predominantly used in tabletop games, digital games have recently taken to using dice in interesting ways to create new mechanics.
Whether it be by using dice to create a combat system or supplementing other core mechanics with controlled randomness, it’s clear that dice can help to create unique and fresh ideas when applied to video games.
10 Die In The Dungeon (Prologue)
With the full game "Coming Soon" to Steam and set to be published by indie publisher HypeTrain Digital, Die In The Dungeon's prologue is currently available to play on Steam for free, and provides a sneak peek into the turn-based deck-building rogue-like. Die In The Dungeon tasks players with combining different dice and discovering synergies in order to defeat enemies.
The prologue features over twenty floors that increase in difficulty as the run progresses and features ten unique enemies, as well as two boss encounters. Die In The Dungeon allows players to build and customize their own deck of dice with different effects, which can be combined with the game's various modifiers for a variety of different strategies.
9 Citizen Sleeper
This role-playing sci-fi indie game takes inspiration from tabletop RPGs, using dice and “clocks” that seem to be torn from the pages of “Powered By The Apocalypse” TTRPG systems.
Citizen Sleeper takes place over several “cycles,” in which players are dealt randomly rolled dice which they can then assign to various actions across the space station that the game takes place in. Each action has the potential to shape the lives of the other characters in the game, as well as the station itself.
8 For The King
This strategy RPG uses elements from tabletop games for its over-world travel and dice-based combat and combines them with rogue-like elements, though each run of the game takes much longer than the average rogue-like.
For The King tasks players with defending the land from various monsters by completing quests, gathering loot, and leveling up to improve their party. The game features a unique combat system that uses dice in the form of “slots” to determine its outcomes. Players can use attacks and abilities, all determined by a roll of the dice, to overcome enemy encounters.
7 Dice Kingdoms
This game takes the resource and economy management of tabletop games like Catan and combines them with the turn-based strategy of Civilization to create a unique strategic experience.
Dice Kingdoms gets its name from its push-your-luck resource gathering, in which players roll dice to gather different resources to build out their kingdom. If players don’t like what they rolled, they can re-roll their dice to try and get a better outcome, but this risks rolling more skulls. Roll too many skulls, and players will cause a natural disaster.
6 Roll
This strategy clicker game doubles as a rogue-like deck-builder, giving players exactly 2500 dice rolls to score as many points as they can. The game focuses on creating a relaxing, meditative experience for players to take their time and puzzle out each decision.
Roll features a “dicebuilding system” that lets players create different strategies and discover new synergies every run, boosting the game’s replayability. Roll offers plenty of dice-rolling fun, and at such a low price, it’s worth checking out for any fan of dice games.
5 Circadian Dice
Perhaps one of the more underrated games on this list, Circadian Dice is a rogue-like deck-building game with a twist: instead of building a deck of cards, players build a set of dice. The game is up-front about its RNG and bases its gameplay on manipulating that RNG in the player’s favor by shaping the sides of their dice to grant money, health, stats, and more.
Circadian Dice features sixty relics and ten unique heroes that change up gameplay and provide incentives for different strategies and take place over thirteen scenarios that take between ten and thirty minutes to complete.
4 Dicey Dungeons
This dice-based rogue-like comes from revered game developer Terry Cavanagh and features six playable characters in the form of dice, each with their unique mechanics.
Each run plays out as a series of combat revolving around die rolls, and interacting with each character’s passive abilities. The game’s unique dice-based combat has players equipping various cards, and placing their dice inside to gain their effects. The asymmetric character classes of Dicey Dungeons, along with its procedurally generated runs, also give the game a hefty amount of replay value.
3 Slice & Dice
This unique dice-based rogue-like has players take control of a party of five heroes, each with their unique class that determines the sides of their individual dice. This could include anything from basic attacks and blocks to poison attacks and mana gain.
Players roll the dice of their party, pushing their luck by re-rolling bad rolls and using each die to take out different enemies and keep their party alive. Each run is made up of many combat encounters, with players leveling their heroes up as they go, gathering equipment, and creating different builds. Slice & Dice also features several bosses, as well as plenty of extra modes and difficulty modifiers that add to the game’s replay value.
2 Luckitown
Developed by burgeoning game developers, Sokpop, who recently produced hits such as Stacklands, Luckitown is a turn-based tower defense game with Yahtzee mechanics.
In Luckitown, players can roll and re-roll dice to gather resources that allow them to construct various buildings and defenses for their town. Although the game is very different from Yahtzee, it does feature one of its most prominent mechanics: the hold system, in which players can hold certain dice, while re-rolling others. This allows for a lot of push-your-luck gameplay in which players are trying to manufacture the perfect roll.
1 Dungeons Of Aether
Set in the Rivals Of Aether universe, Dungeons Of Aether is a turn-based dungeon-crawler that features both a Story Mode and a rogue-like style Challenge Mode. The game also features four unique playable characters, each with their playstyle, that add variety and replay value to the game.
The game’s combat uses dice drafting that forces the player to adapt every turn as both the player and the enemy take turns selecting dice from the pool, assigning them to various stats to boost them, and then selecting an action to take.