Dicey Dungeons is a charming inventory-builder rogue-like where each one of your character's abilities is triggered by using a reservoir of dice you roll each turn. As you level up you gain the ability to roll more dice and thus trigger increasingly complex abilities. You fight your way through multi-leveled dungeons populated with enemies, health drops, blacksmith tiles where you can upgrade your inventory, loot chests that contain abilities, and depots of sale and trade.

While dice drive the game's core mechanic, the developers didn't stop there. The characters in the game are also, themselves, dice. So, yes, it's dice rolling dice and using the numbers on those dice to trigger a number of abilities that can protect them or damage foes that are - I would say unfortunately - pretty much anything but dice.

In the game's fiction, contestants sign up for a devilish game show run by Lady Luck, a puppet master intent on transforming people into dice and trapping them in a dungeon to entertain her studio audience. It's just as weird as it sounds, but it works, framing the game in an appropriately cartoony light. Alongside Dicey Dungeons' comic art style and ecstatic soundtrack, the narrative enhances the game's sense of fun.

You play as one of six characters: the warrior, the thief, the robot, the inventor, the witch, and the secret unlockable jester - who starts out as Lady Luck's sidekick before being turned into a dice himself. Each character has their own special abilities and starting equipment sets. These determine how straightforward each one is to play; your first run with the warrior feels like a cakewalk compared to using the witch for the first time. The tradeoff here is that the witch offers a lot more potential strategy and customization options than her earnest, sword-wielding friend. Each character has a series of six progressively difficult "episodes." Each episode, in turn, culminates in a boss battle, providing hours upon hours of gameplay and allowing Dicey Dungeons' formula to appeal to a wide spectrum of players, from the most casual to the most invested.

One of this game's little miracles is just how well-written it is. Don't get me wrong, there are certainly still some stinkers when it comes to Dicey Dungeons' one-liners; look no further than the witch - a caricature of a twenty-something content creator - asking Lady Luck to "take a selfie" for proof. But the majority of dialogue in this game is refreshingly bright and surprisingly funny. I usually don't take screenshots of my games, but I couldn't help chuckling and snapping a picture of the following line from Ned the Blacksmith during a stop along one of my runs:

"Mate! Come on in! Want a carrot? The Gardener just dropped by and gave me a few - delicious!"

Of course, this line is delivered apropos of nothing. Outside of the Gardner dropping by to give Ned some fresh carrots, I guess. It's purely there for enjoyment. And really, in a lot of ways, so is Dicey Dungeons.

The only knocks I have against the game can be found in its combat mechanics and repetitive boss encounters. While its turn-based combat has to be simple in order to be accessible to the wide age range this kind of game is looking to engage, it struck me as too hard to grok after a battle or two yet too repetitive to sustain my interest after about five hours of playing. On the boss fight front, after you make it to the end of an episode with your character, you fight the same boss that other characters on the same episode do, meaning that - in my mind - the game is only fun enough to sustain runs from one character of the starting five and the jester (as he has his own fun gameplay hooks outside of the base set). Unfortunately, it's impossible to unlock the jester without playing a whole lot of runs with all of the other characters and, thus, fighting the same bosses over and over again. These detractions didn't necessarily impact my pick-up-put-down joy with this one. But, over the long run, they caused me to lose interest.

Still, I would recommend Dicey Dungeons to pretty much anyone as a goofy and satisfying self-contained experience that is perfect for handheld gaming in short bursts. I played it entirely on my Steam Deck in thirty minute to an hour long chunks. What a delight!

All I have to say now is: Mate! Come on in! Want a carrot? 8/10.

Where it shines:

• Writing
• Goofiness
• Art and sound

Where it fades:

• Equivocal battle mechanics
• Boss repetition