Dicey Dungeons

Every action in Dicey Dungeons runs through a single constraint: the dice you roll each turn are the only resources you have, and every class makes you spend them differently. Terry Cavanagh released the game on August 13, 2019, with artwork by Marlowe Dobbe and a soundtrack by Chipzel.

The premise is a game-show dungeon ruled by Lady Luck, a goddess who has transformed contestants into giant dice. Each run is a series of combat encounters across a procedurally generated dungeon, where players slot rolled dice into equipment cards to deal damage, heal, or apply status effects. The opponent attacks on a fixed schedule, so each fight is a short optimization puzzle: how do you spend these specific numbers before the enemy’s next move lands?

What keeps the game from being one roguelike among many is how completely each class reframes those same dice. The Warrior spends dice directly into equipment slots. The Thief steals random equipment from enemies each turn and must improvise with whatever arrives. The Robot plays a push-your-luck blackjack game to generate its dice pool. The Inventor destroys used equipment after each fight, converting it into parts for crafting more powerful gadgets. The Jester and Witch each carry their own distinct rulesets. Six classes share one dice economy and produce six genuinely different games.

• Six playable classes with mechanically distinct turn structures
• Equipment-based combat using rolled dice as the only resource
• Procedurally generated dungeons for varied runs
• Dozens of enemies including creatures from Irish mythology and animate household objects
• Chipzel soundtrack; artwork by Marlowe Dobbe
• Reunion DLC adding six new episodes, released free in July 2022

The update history reflects sustained development well past launch. Cavanagh shipped several numbered updates through late 2019 and across 2020, added a Halloween special episode in October 2019, and brought the game to Nintendo Switch in December 2020. Updates continued into 2021, and in July 2022 the Reunion DLC arrived, followed by version 2.1 the following month, marking the most substantial content expansion since release.

The game’s difficulty comes from class mastery rather than raw attrition: runs are short enough that learning a class’s logic is the actual challenge, which makes it a natural fit for players who want strategic depth without lengthy time investment per attempt.