Die in the Dungeon: Origins (2024) [PC] first impressions

Die in the Dungeon is an upcoming 2024 indie release, which also happens to have a free prologue to hold us over in the meantime. Origins explores the basic premise and mechanics of what will be expanded upon in the main game, and did I mention that it’s free?!

You will use dice instead of cards to build your deck to fight waves of enemies, all while engaging in various upgrades and events along the way. Energy is used to play each die, starting at three per turn. The dice are placed in slots on the board, which interact with your character, the enemies, or the board itself. Red, blue, and green are the most basic, and they correlate to Attack, Block, and Heal respectively. The number rolled each turn determines how much damage they’ll deal, and this can be added on by a purple die called a Boost die. There are a few other niche dice to use which cause things like instant casting upon use or placing a buff over one slot that stays from turn to turn, but I won’t spoil too much of the strategy since a lot of the fun is discovering how everything works together.

Dice upgrades are also a consistent mechanic that happens between most combat scenarios, and upgrades improve the overall roll potential of each individual die. You’ll start with a basic six-sided die that can’t roll higher than a 3. Bumping it up to a Silver or Gold version increases both its minimum and maximum roll potential. A lot of my Gold dice could no longer roll any lower than a 3, greatly increasing their efficiency in battle. Relics are also rewarded after some of the battles and scenarios, which act as passive abilities that stay with you through each combat encounter. While some relics put +1’s randomly across the board or simply increase your maximum life, others provide a much higher risk/reward such as rolling the lowest possible number on odd turns while gaining extra energy on even turns. I found that using the dice in different ways and planning out strategies from turn to turn kept it engaging from start to finish. Learning how to boost the slots that you place your healing or attacks in will be essential to getting through the tougher stages.

The dice board in the middle is where all the action happens. Both you and a variety of different enemies you’ll encounter will be interacting with the board each turn. Once it feels like you have a good strategy mastered, you may be faced with a minion that suddenly steals one of your spaces or poisons it, decreasing the effectiveness of your dice. Adapting to these situations while also often being at risk for losing the run if I made one small error or miscalculation kept me on my toes the whole time.

It took approximately seven hours to do everything in-game and nearly complete all the achievements along the way. Once you finish the final (and only) boss for this prologue, you’re given the option to call it quits or continue onto “Endless” mode which brings on additional waves of increasingly challenging enemies. If you’re an achievement hunter, make sure you get to floor 50 before closing the book on this one.

For fans of Slay the Spire, you will feel right at home here and I highly recommend spending a few hours with this one before the main release!

Hailing from the mitten state, Alex is a physical collector and gamer of all genres for over two decades. He has established himself in wedding videography and finance which he uses to help encourage others in forging their own path in remote work and full control over how far they can take their passions to support themselves and their families.