Dice A Million Review

Dice A Million is a dice-based roguelike developed by countlessnights and published by 2 Left Thumbs. Here, you are forced against your will to roll dice and earn pips to buy your way to freedom — no matter how many runs, dice, and crazy combinations it takes to win.

However, I think the most prominent thing that jumps out to me is that… well, there’s a story to begin with. A game like this doesn’t need a narrative, as the thrill of seeing numbers going up is more than enough to keep your attention for way too many hours. That being said, it did leave me incredibly intrigued.

Its inspiration is very apparent. With trippy backgrounds, calm music, and a pixelated art style, it would be a shock if Dice A Million didn't borrow some of its design language from the genre-defining game, Balatro. Still, it's all pleasant to look at, and even when things start to get messy, there are plenty of tooltips to help you understand the chaos. It's really nice and relaxing… contrasting the utter insanity you’ll be forced to utilise to survive the gameplay loop.

To complete a run, you need to beat all the face bosses, but in order to get to them, you need to earn it by going through several rounds. Your goal in each is to pay the fee of pips within a number of dice rolls. Simply select the dice you want and roll them to earn pips. Dice come in a whole variety of flavours, which can include not being a die. From your standard D6s to D100s, Rubik’s Cubes, magic 8 balls, bottles, bottle caps, coins, bombs, pencils, mahjong tiles, and other non-die objects. Hey, as long as it has a face, it can be rolled.

You can also play cards to give you a temporary edge and to get yourself out of a sticky situation, such as getting an extra roll, enhancing a die, or doubling your value. However, dice and cards alone won’t get you too far by themselves, so you’ll probably need to equip rings to add bonuses like multipliers for certain faces or throwing extra dice. All of these in combination will be needed in later rounds as the fee will increase each time it’s paid. Pips do transfer over from round to round, except before and after beating a boss who has unique conditions all designed to screw you over, so you’d better make sure your dice are up to scratch.

Once you complete a round, you can spend your leftover pips at the shop to get new dice, cards, and stamps (an unconditional multiplier). You can also remove dice from your collection, but like the fees, every shop gets more and more expensive as the run goes on, so you’d better have enough pips on hand. Of course, the fee also increases with each round, which means you’ll constantly need to upgrade your arsenal to keep up.

After that, rinse and repeat until you win. It's fairly simple in practise, but things will get complicated really quickly, to the point where your screen might become a mess of dice and calculations. I have mentioned before that I don’t like dice in roguelikes because they’re often too random to really strategise around, even in a genre that really loves luck-based mechanics. However, Dice A Million managed to make luck something you can plan around or subvert entirely. There are plenty of ways to manipulate outcomes or make the most of any roll, which I really liked.

Honestly, I felt in control of my fate most of the time, able to plan around specific strategies and adapt to whatever a boss may throw at me. There are also enough tooltips, indicators, and warnings to ensure that I have all the info I need to make the right decisions. If I did get a bad roll, it's surprisingly my own fault, and my next attempt should correct that.

The build that let me win my first run was all about the number of dice I could throw at once. With a ring that threw Die of Dice (generates an extra die) for every 10 dice I had, a ring that doubled extra dice thrown, and with enough multipliers for whatever they rolled, it would fill the screen with enough stuff to cause my PC to pause to calculate them all. It was both extremely stupid… yet extremely effective.

I honestly didn't run into any issues throughout my many, many attempts. No dipping under 60 FPS, no glitches that aren't a deliberate choice, and no game design gripes I can come up with. That being said, there are challenge runs, and one of them is going to haunt my nightmares if I ever go for 100% completion. Here's a tip: unless you can manipulate the roll, do not use the Carlos die.

Ultimately, you should really play Dice A Million. If you loved Balatro, you’ll find yet another great and addictive roguelike that will take up hours upon hours of your life just rolling dice.