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I'm absolutely baffled by how little attention this game gets. This game has some of the best synergies in gameplay I have ever seen in a rogue-like.
The world of Dicefolk is filled with "Chimeras," monsters with all kinds of weird designs and abilities. These creatures suddenly went hostile when an evil god named Salem took control of them. You play as Alea, a young hero who takes on the task of defeating Salem. You are equipped with a talisman that lets you take control of chimeras.
The gameplay is a mix of rogue-like, deckbuilder and monster tamer. You play through three zones and each zone has multiple nodes for you to discover. Most nodes are hidden when you enter a zone, and you have to defeat enemies to reveal more of the map. You start with three dummy creatures that are strong enough to defeat early enemies, but what you really want are chimeras.
These can be found in statues, there are three in each zone and you can pick one chimera from these three statues (like picking a starter in Pokemon). These chimeras always have a special ability. These abilities are activated under specific conditions, when the creature attacks, when it gets attacked, if another ally takes damage, and so on. You usually look for abilities that complement each other for your strategy. For example, there is a creature that attacks back if it is attacked and another that attacks when one of your creatures attacks. This way, you can always attack back when your chimera gets hit.
Combat in this game works a bit differently than other creature battlers. Instead of having a bunch of abilities for your creatures, you use dice. You start with three dice and can get more later. Each side of a die has various symbols that define what you can do. Swords let you attack, shields block one attack, crossed swords let you and the enemy attack each other, and many more. A key gameplay mechanic is also rotation. You always fight with a team of three chimeras, and enemies also have up to three creatures. But only the monster in the front can normally attack and take damage, so you can rotate creatures around with your dice to change who can attack or who takes damage. This way, you can split damage between your creatures while maximizing damage on enemies.
The enemy team also uses dice, but you can decide the order in which each die is used. This gives players great control over what they want to do, despite the random element of dice rolling. I think this is a great way to combine RNG with tactical decisions.
Damage on your creatures is kept between battles, but there are often ways to heal both inside and outside of battle.
One aspect of healing is equipment. Each chimera has slots for items, just like in Pokémon, but the number of item slots can be increased on special nodes like the campfire. A chimera can have up to five items. These items can provide healing, more attack power, or even completely new abilities. Equipment is the key to refining your build, they pair greatly with the individual abilities of your chimeras.
As you progress through the zones, you will also find the dice merchant. This guy offers new dice but also improves your existing dice by swapping out sides with new ones. This way, you can increase the chances of rolling what you need, another great way to control the RNG of this game.
As you progress through the game, you will unlock new talismans. These act as "creature" decks. Each talisman has its own pool of chimeras that it can pull from when offering you one at statues. These are often themed around specific gameplay mechanics, like being aggressive with attacks and attack power or playing more mobile with many rotations to activate abilities. It's a great way to try out different strategies and playstyles.
Once you beat the game with all four base talismans, you unlock the door to the final boss, Salem.
By playing with the various talismans, you will also unlock more chimeras, new equipment, and even new gameplay mechanics. There are so many cool combinations and strategies to try out.
Beating the game unlocks trial mode, which works similarly to ascensions in other rogue-likes. They increase the difficulty by adding more challenging rules to the game, but unlike other games, you also get a positive rule change, like getting free rerolls. It's interesting to see a difficulty system that does not just increase the difficulty further but makes things interesting by giving you something in return too.
The last patch also introduced a new challenge mode that lets you play a run with very specific rules, starting equipment, and creatures. Beating these challenge runs unlocks new items for you to try out.
There is a lot to discover, and I really love how all the mechanics fit perfectly together to support your strategies. It's like a neat little puzzle box that you try to solve.