Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles is a beautiful rogue-like dice battler in which you draft a collection of dice you use to purify the creatures of a wasted land and restore it to glory. It makes use of the now classic Slay the Spire format of a branching tree with different shops, battles, and encounters on it as the player makes their way to the final boss of one of the three increasingly difficult maps in the game.

I love this genre and have reviewed a lot of these types of games. Each of them changes around ten to twenty percent of the original Spire formula, so I won't bother you too much about the loop. You fight enemies in turn based combat by drawing cards or - in this case - dice. When you win, you are given more dice to choose from and a form of currency where you can buy upgrades. HP doesn't regenerate until you beat a boss, making it precious and imbuing runs with tension.

Outside of its dice, the way Oracles diverges from the norms of its genre charmed me. Instead of killing foes in the fiction of the game, players are tasked with purifying beings who have been corrupted by an evil force plaguing the land. I ended battles a lot happier seeing purified beings scurry away to a better life rather than having to wipe the blood off my dagger from a murderous encounter with irredeemable beasts. In Oracles, character health is kept in hearts. If your chaos bar is filled to seven or above, you lose a heart. Once you've lost your last heart, you are corrupted. Since the chaos bar has far fewer counters than, say, a health bar in Spire, the dance of purifying oneself versus taking on chaos becomes beautiful and dangerous. Meanwhile, you can deal both purification and corruption to enemies, but corrupting a being that has already surrendered to the evil of the land comes with its costs.

Autonomous sentinels that provide more dice, multiple shop options rather than just one merchant with rotating goods, and six playable characters make Oracles a worthy try if you enjoy Spire-likes and would like a different take.

The art, design, and overall look of the game are gorgeous. It's bright and cute and dramatic all at once. Even the simple act of rolling dice each turn feels nice and tactile. And, of course, using them instead of cards to determine player choice for each turn of battle adds a massive layer of complexity and strategy to the experience.

My dings against this game are twofold. The randomness introduced by the dice mechanic, while often thrilling, can also backfire in pretty major ways and make a whole run feel wasted simply because of a few unlucky rolls. And, while I know introducing an element of randomness is the point here, I play rogue-like deckbuilding games to handcraft and hone a group of cards, dice, or whatever I'm drafting within an inch of its life, to create shining synergies drawn from unlikely combinations. I tried to do that with these dice, and sometimes they just didn't come together. When that happened, it felt like I'd wasted my time.

Meanwhile, Oracles' bosses are balanced in such a way that I was able to make it to the final boss on the final floor before getting absolutely smoked multiple times. This was frustrating as a player. I'm not sure if it was because my dice weren't hitting or I just picked the wrong strategy, but it wasn't what I would call an invitation to come back for more.

These elements aside. I played a ton of this game and loved it. I think you will too if you're willing to blame a couple prematurely ended runs on the cruelty of chance and move on. 8/10.

Where it shines:

• Drafting dice
• Design
• Purification rather than killing

Where it fades:

• Overly random
• Final boss balance