Steam Link Spotlight - Dicey Dungeons

Steam Link Spotlight is a new feature where we take a look at PC games that play exceptionally well with the Steam Link app. In case you missed it, our last entry focused on Faeria, a collectible card game that used to be available on the App Store, but now is PC only. Read more about why it's still a great mobile experience over here.

This week, I want to talk about a new game. A brand new game, in fact. Just yesterday, Terry Cavanagh—the mind behind Super Hexagon and VVVVVV—released Dicey Dungeons, an awesome roguelike, deck-building game that focuses on dice-based combat.

The really neat thing about Dicey Dungeons is how it disguises the kind of game it is. It’s a deck-builder, but the game doesn’t feature any cards, at least not in the traditional sense. There’s gear, which you equip to your dicey hero that you can then use with dice that you roll at the beginning of combat. Some of this gear you can only use if you roll specific kinds of numbers, while others might be able to modify your dice rolls. The goal is to build a “deck” of gear for your character that gives you the combat options you need to defeat your enemies.

On the roguelike front, Dicey Dungeons is similarly deceptive. This game casts you as a contestant on a twisted, dystopian game show where you are turned into an anthropomorphic die and tested in single combat against all kinds of bizarre enemies. If you die, you simply start over as a new contestant, but usually at that point you’ve unlocked a new class to play as to shake things up.

Dicey Dungeons isn’t as sophisticated as a lot of other roguelike deck-builders out there, but that’s precisely why it’s such as good game to play with the Steam Link app. You can control the entire game with the mouse, so if you play Dicey Dungeons using the direct cursor control option, tapping and dragging on dice feels completely natural. Navigating dungeons is similarly a click-to-move affair, which also translates nicely.

There was no moment when playing Dicey Dungeons on the Steam Link app where I felt I wasn’t able to control things as well as I could playing in front of my PC. The video above shows that. The video also proves that I’m still learning how to build loadouts in the game, as I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to beat a loud bird without enough attack options to get it done.

Don’t let that deter you from playing this game though. Dicey Dungeons is great, and I really, really hope I can play it on phone without using Steam Link in the near future.