Good and clever game. Extra points for great black humor.

This is a tough little game. I was happy to see if go into full release. I used to play Culdecept quite a bit on PS2. This game brought back the fun I had with that game. It is a little hectic and a huge learning curve once you get done with the tutorial. All in all, it is a pretty fun game.

https://youtu.be/WOZrEtJ46Zc

This game is actually (and rather surprisingly) good. The only bad part is the writing - it's full of memes & pop-culture references & lolrandom stuff, so it comes out as rather tryhard-ish. But visuals, on the other hand, are pretty good (even the memes - lots of art is based on them) so, as long as you skip the text, it's not very annoying. I'll stress on this - the lead artist of this game is really talented and it's joyful to look on his works.

But the most important part is that the core gameplay is rock solid. Yeah, you draw cards, sure, you roll dice, but the game is anything but random - all the abilities, deckbuilding, equip system (that one is badly explained in-game - basically, you pay points for the card now so later you can cast this card with a discount; great in early game and for expensive combos which are impossible otherwise; like, say, Juggernaut + Here's Johnny = whipe all minions on the board) and just the right plays allow you to prevail literally no matter what. The game is not very hardcore, but also isn't too easy - I say that the difficulty is just about right.

Each class has its own cardpool (4 classes and ~170-ish cards in total) plus there's a bunch of common cards, shared between everyone. I wouldn't say that the possibilities are endless, but it's more than enough to have a fun run through main campaign (which is about 6-7 hours). Maybe with a bit of experimentation too - you can recruit several sidekicks and they have slightly different abilities from the player's version of the classes and, surprisingly, that changes their tactics a lot. So, considering there are four classes, one can expect something like 30 hours or so of rather fresh gameplay. Which, for 15 bucks, seems to be pretty good.

Anyways, it's a pretty nice one, dunno why there seems to be zero attention to it.

I applaud them for having the price cheaper while in early access than it will be once it's released out of early access. Usually it's the other way around.

That said, the game is definitely an early access game. Content is limited. But what there is, is good, and in my opinion it's worth investing in this game in the hope for more content.

Graphics style is gritty cartoon and caricature. Oversized heads, bulging muscles, punches to the face, etc. There's a lot of humor in this game and pop culture references.

It's basically a board game with cards. You and an opponent take turns rolling dice and moving around a board. When you land on a space there might be a neutral enemy you can either fight to get gold or hire them so that they will fight the opponent. The battles are just one hit and then they are done, it does not continue until someone dies. So basically you're trying to whittle down your opponents HP to zero over time. Each game I've played has been fairly short, so it's not like a long drawn out campaign.

You can use cards to lay down friendly minions, spells to harm enemies, movement spells to move you where you want to go, and other options. But those cost action points to use and you only have so many action points per turn.

There are different characters you can play and they each have their own special abilites and cards. That makes for a nice variety in playstyle.

tl;dr breakdown:


Card game on a square board. (or a board game with cards!)
Early Access
Limited content at this time with promise of more coming
Play as different characters, each with own style and cards
Short games - good for a quick gaming fix
Humor (the title scroll is hilarous)
Buy it cheap now before they increase the price!

This game hits the target demographic that Culdcept, Guild of Dungeoneering, and Card Hunter does, with sarcastic humor and good board/card game design and card play. Right now it's early access, so the game is very incomplete, but something to put on your watch list to buy for sure when its ready to go!

The game is a deck building game, but played on a board where you roll dice to move around, and deal with the challenges on each space through your characters abilities or cards you can play from your deck, all the while fighting the larger threat of the boss you must fight who is also traversing the board. It has good strategy elements, fun graphics, and a touch of randomness that can make you cheer or cry out in agony when that one die roll does or doesn't go your way.

So I heard about this game through Letigress' stream. My understanding is she partnered up with the developers in order to help promote the game, which is neat. So lets get into why I DO reccomend this game...
The style is very remincent of Hearthstone. The cards look slightly similar but the style is VERY different. I mean, for starters, its a board game. Games take anywhere between 5-15 minutes for a round, which I think is perfect. There is a fair amount of strategy that goes into a match. For $5, I think it is totally worth giving this game a try and seeing where the developers take it! Now... Here is what I'd like to see from the game...
-MULTIPLAYER! This game needs to let me play against my friends. That's like 80% of the appeal. I've already beat all the bots. Give me new game modes. This should be the developers first priority.
-Card variety. Right now the starter deck gets stale after 3-5 hours. There is very little you can do with it at the moment. This game needs 100+ cards to REALLY start to be something special.
-More characters. This is a given and the developers know this. I'm excited to see what they come up with. The abilities of the NPCs you can play seem neat.
-Let the text and dialogue move at the player's pace. Create like a "Next" arrow when interactions and stuff are happening. Everything moves so fast right now and I missed a lot of it when I first started.
-New boards. The board now is cool, but I'd like more stuff to happen on it and in the future even have different boards that aren't as simple as a single square. Maybe something that can accomodate more than two players?

That's all I have for now. I'll update as the developers do. You should get this game. It is cheap and a lot of fun! I only have 1.4 hours shows while I write this, but played offline for 5ish hours. I'll probably play 5 or so more on this patch then wait for updates. Thank you to Letigress for turning me on to this! :)
Cheers.

DICETINY: The Lord of the Dice is a fun, singleplayer deck-building board game filled with pop-culture references and parodies. Your goal is to defeat the opposing heroes, using spell and minion cards, to ultimately find the ONE DICE that rules all others and defeat the very evil and serious sage Dead Serious.

Rules
A great in-depth guide created by a couple of the developers is presented [here], detailing the user interface, spell cards & minion cards, the board and spaces, and gameplay. I’ll only provide the important gameplay basics and information not in the guide below.

When you first start a new game, you must choose a starting class and hero. They each have unique abilities (classes and heroes) which can be used once per turn, or passively active, and lap bonuses (gold, attack, defense, AP, card draw, etc.) which are additional passive events that occur when your hero goes around the board. Each hero will also have different starting AP, Health, and Armor. So far, I have not found any disproportionate imbalances between any of the classes/heroes; however there are a couple easily favored ones. The classes and their unique abilities are listed below.

• Warrior: class ability is Low Blow (+3 Dmg when battling enemy hero).
  
• Wizard: class ability is The Next Great Wizard (Max AP +3 [up to 10]).
  
• Rogue: class ability is The Aura of Charisma (10% higher chance to Hire minions).
  
• Cleric: class ability is Members Only (use the Temple for free).

At the beginning of a game, you start with 3 cards, and 100 Gold; however, the next person to start gets 150 Gold. A start bonus is then selected: permanent +1 to attack, temporary +1 to AP, or 100 Gold, and the turn begins. There are a few actions that can be performed in a single turn, including: Roll Dice, Draw a Card (by spending gold), Use Hero Ability, Cast a Spell/Minion Card, Equip a Card, or End Turn. These actions can be performed in whatever order you wish. Multiple cards can be cast (assuming you meet the AP requirements) but the Draw a Card and Use Hero Ability features can only be activated once per turn. Every turn, your hero levels up - your AP is replenished, and the maximum AP is increased by 1. The game rules are automatically enforced so there is nothing to keep track of, except for planning out how much AP you will need to use. Applicable targets/spaces will be highlighted for ease of use.

Gold is provided upon defeating enemy or neutral minions, opening chests, activating event spaces, etc. Gold is primarily used in-game to Draw a Card, and Hire neutral minions. Hiring a neutral minion (a minion with no allegiance that is already summoned onto the board) will make it become allied to you, and will fight for you as if you summoned it yourself. Battles occur whenever any hero lands on a space with an occupying opposing minion/hero.

After every game, gems are awarded. They are used for purchasing additional spell and minion cards to customize and improve your deck(s). DICETINY is first and foremost, a deck-building game. Decks can be reorganized outside of matches, and each hero in your party can have a deck assuming your collection is large enough to support it.

Match Types
A single game ends whenever the match requirements have been met. The different match types and their requirements that I have come across so far are listed below.

• Duel: defeat enemy hero.
  
• Annihilation: defeat enemy hero and all enemy minions.
  
• Betrayal: force opponent to lose all gold.
  
• Transport: retrieve all artifacts, then return to starting space.
  
• Rush: complete the required amount of laps around the board.

Board Design
The general board design and enemy hero encounters will not change if you start a new game; however, spaces and minion locations are procedurally generated. There are 4 different types of spaces, listed below.

• Base: contains a certain action, such as: the starting point, shop, dungeon, temple, or an event. Minions cannot be summoned here.
  
• Event: one time use random event space.
  
• Minion: allied, enemy, or neutral.
  
• Empty.

Video Gameplay
https://youtu.be/yyQdUsEFjJI
AI Difficulty
So far, I have not had any issues with the AI difficulty. I have not faced any enemies that were either too easy, too hard, or would make stupid decisions. Although some of the enemy heroes seem to have a certain style to them, their predetermined decks will dictate the aggressiveness or difficulty of the encounter. Since the enemy decks were carefully designed, the AI seem to be fairly well balanced. I have seen them: enter shops and purchase spells, hire minions, chase after me, run away from me, target all of my minions, go for the objective, etc.

RNG
From my experience, the RNG seems to also be fairly balanced. I believe it has largely to do with deck-building abilities, but for the most part, every action, dice roll, card draw, etc. seems perfectly acceptable. It is very hard to determine the quality of the game’s RNG without running into problems, which I have not.

Current State of the Game
The development roadmap, along with update frequency, is outlined [here]. As seen with their frequent Steam interactions, the developers definitely seem to take care into providing the love and support needed to nourish DICETINY, and keep it balanced while introducing new heroes, cards, stages, etc. In fact, after 9 months of early access feedback, the official launch has commenced!

Bugs
There were a couple bugs that I encountered; they are listed below.

• Achievements are not yet supported, although they show up in the Library/Store pages. Not really a bug, but possibly a useful bit of info.
  
• ALT-Tab will sometimes cause the game to freeze, generally during a loading screen, with a priority to show the window above all else. Only way to kill the process is to restart the computer, or if on Windows 10, go to Task View, add a New Desktop, and open Task Manager there.

Verdict
DICETINY is a great way to experience some single-player dice-rolling action. The light-hearted banter between heroes, vast amount of pop-culture references and bravery to use curse words make this game very relatable to young adults. Due to its polished presentation, great card mechanics/deck-building synergies, and hefty game length, DICETINY is definitely recommended to fans of the card/board game genres and those looking for some RNG fun.

Review copy provided by Fakedice

DICETINY: The Lord of the Dice is a board/card game with RPG elements. This game is in Early Access, and at the moment it does not have too much content.

When I first started playing this, first thought what come to my mind that its a bit looks like Hearthstone, but this not that.
This basically a board game with cards. In every turn you and your opponent roll a dice and move around a board, the two characters moving in different way, one start a circle from left, other from right. The game will be end when someone has no more HP. If you arrive for a land with enemy, you fight , but if that enemy is neutral you have a option to hire it.

You can use a different cards, some cards boost you, some put down friendly minions, etc. If you want play a card, this cost some points what you get in every turn. At the start you have one character to play, other you can unlock when you beat them in the story mode. All heroes have own special abilities and cards as well. Also you can create your own card decks.

The graphic style is a caricatured carton, and this looks nice. Sounds and music also good.

So my verdict

+complected with humor
+nice graphics
+steam cards
+cheaper in EA than later when got full version
+fast matches

-at the moment not too much content
-no multiplayer
-no steam achievements

If you like board games you really should try out this one. This game has a good gameplay, nice graphics and humor. However at the moment not have to much content because game is in early access now, but to compensate this, now game costs less. I think if you are interested in this, it's good to buy it now, as later will cost more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyyLOnpqu9s

Dicetiny is a fun little dice rolling and deck building game. In the video above we show a short preview of a game on the beginning level.

Fakedice provided a review copy of Dicetiny to The Hidden Levels and for that we thank them greatly.

My first impression was that the UI was very similar to a certain card game I play on occasion. The artwork is very similar in the deckbuilder only however, so we can move past that. The cards are interesitng and the rest of the artwork is highly stylized in a good looking package of minions, creatures, characters, and cards.

The game mechanics are also interesting albeit not groundbreaking in terms of a board game. You roll dice to move around the board, playing cards and defeating minions until one of the two players is at zero health. The unique aspect seems to be the character abilities such as giving a minion +1 damage, or giving your character +2 attack power. That's it essentially, you roll dice and play cards, attempting to defeat your opponenet or minions. You can alternatively pay to hire some minions which became fun when our hero was able to give them more attack power with his special ability.

The replay value is relatively high, you can gain more cards and heros, build decks, and play consistently without it being a repetitive experience. The game is stilll in early access so the potential for more additions is more than a certainty. There are also a substantial number of gaming related "easter eggs" or small jokes relating to other games. It took me a bit to realize that "Middle Board" was a play on Lord of the rings. There is a solid mix of humor, strategy, and fun that seems to make this a solid board game experience for the PC.

I'd recommend picking this one up if you have any plans to play it, especially since during Early Acess it appears to be substantially discounted. The price increase will be corrolating to the addition of more content towards release and it appears that it will leave Early Access at the $20 price point. I plan on coming back to it each time they unlock more levels and content.

Thanks for reading / watching. Check out www.thehiddenlevels.com for previews, reviews, and gaming news!

This Culdcept-style game might become something great later in development, but the current very basic levels (and rampant Engrish) mean this is basically just a proof-of-concept demo. Only buy it now if you're trying to take advantage of the low early adopter price.