Dicey Dungeons might just be one of my favourite indie games this year, a unique blend of an usual roguelike with an ability system powered by cards and dice rolls.

Note : This was a personal purchase.

For those who haven't seen my previous articles it's a dungeon crawler from Terry Cavanagh (Super Hexagon, VVVVVV), Chipzel, and Marlowe Dobbe. Like a lot of other roguelikes the combat is turn-based, with cards you use a little like Slay the Spire. However, the way your abilities and equipment work is where it differs a lot. Each card requires you to roll the dice to certain numbers to activate and it's really compelling.

Video of the latest version on Ubuntu 19.04:

A big update landed recently adding in lots of new goodies to play with. This includes a new episode called Parallel Universe for the Warrior. In this mode, all the status effects of equipment have been changed like Poison locking up your gear behind a countdown, Freeze reducing the value of every single dice by 1 and more. It makes it play very differently and Cavanagh liked it so much, that for the release every character class will be getting a Parallel Universe.

On top of that, the hard mode has been redesigned into what's now called the Elimination Round which will be available for each character too. In this mode, enemies have better equipment and more health so it's quite a challenge. There's also new enemies (with more planned for launch), lots of art and audio improvements, more modding support and translation updates.

I certainly will be interested to see what fancy mods people can come up with, even though the gameplay on offer is already fun modders always end up doing something extra fun.

Cavanagh has also announced the the alpha you can purchase currently for $7.99 on itch.io will be stopping soon and no one will be able to then purchase it until the full release sometime in the Summer. The price will be going up to $14.99 then too, so act now if you want it cheaper. If it's not clear already, I think it's excellent and you should check it out. The full release will be on both itch.io (DRM-free + Steam key when live) and Steam.