LogFAQs > #968522677

#6 - Slice & Dice

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/8/6/AAA-H0AADv_K.png

Sometime around late May, I was getting ready to begin this list. I had 50 titles at the time - it was a draft where I still had Metroid Dread, Wildermyth, and Coffee Talk in the top 50 (at 47-49 respectively, Legend of Doom was always gonna be 50 because it's funny), and I still had Super Mario Bros. 35 and CrossCode: A New Home on the list somewhere down the line (in the 30's somewhere), which I'd later give their own entries outside the list. Not quite a perfect list, but it was pretty damn close, and I was happy with it. I wasn't far from bringing it to print.

Then, something terrible happened. A friend of mine said to me, "hey, have you played this dice roguelike? It looks cool." and I was like "do you mean Dicey Dungeons? I played it a while ago, didn't really like it." And he was like "no no, it's something else. It's called Slice & Dice." And I'm a fiend for roguelikes, so sure, I'll give it a look. And that's when I realized that there was a whole layer to the iceberg that I wasn't properly exploring.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/8/7/AAA-H0AADv_L.jpg

If you've never heard of Slice & Dice, I don't blame you - I hadn't either. My friend found out about it through Vinesauce, which is the highest profile look at it I could find on the internet. The other place that came up on a quick google was a site called Buried Treasure, which ended up being the last frontier of my 2020-2021 games hunt - they're a site that does reviews of obscure indie games. *Really* obscure - like, self-published, less than 100 reviews on Steam, stuff you have to dig through itch.io to even find. I used it to pluck a few more titles out to play - this was how I found Dum-Dum way back at #38 for instance. It made me realize how far I still had to go before I really felt like I had plumbed the depths of the internet looking for every game I could play; and even then, I'm still learning about games from 2020-2021 that I've never heard of.

Anyway, that review and a short video of the game convinced me to dive into it. This one wasn't even available on Steam - I had to go onto itch.io (it's also available on android via google play) to find it. And that's how I ended up delaying my list for like over a month, because I got really, really sucked into Slice & Dice.

Slice & Dice is, well, a dice-based roguelite. It's a simple game. You have five heroes, each one of a different class, each of which has their own die to roll. Each side represents a different effect - dealing damage to an enemy, blocking damage from an incoming attack, healing hp, gaining mana to cast spells, as well as other effects. You roll all five of your heroes' dice using Yahtzee rules, where you can keep any number and reroll any number up to twice, and then you use what you have. Enemies roll their attacks first and show you their 'intentions', kind of like Into the Breach, and you get to react accordingly. Along the way, you get choices of class upgrades for all your characters, getting better dice, as well as finding items that modify or improve their dice or give them more hps or immunity to status, etc. You fight through 20 floors, trying not to die along the way. You get the idea.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/8/8/AAA-H0AADv_M.jpg

Ranking roguelikes is really tricky, because they almost always seem the most interesting in the first few hours. It's brand new, you're learning the mechanics, nothing seems old or wearisome yet, you haven't done everything there is to do. Aside from the very best roguelikes, these tend to age badly - I was hesitant to rank games like Iris and the Giant and Ring of Pain as high as I did, because there's a pretty good chance that I won't even remember them in a couple years once the honeymoon period is long over. As a result, I gave Slice & Dice a really modest position on my list at first. I stuck it at #35, figuring that that'd be just fine once I started doing the list. But then I kept playing it. And kept playing it. Over, and over. So I kept moving it up the list. And now it's here.

What really surprised me about Slice & Dice is that while it seems so simple, it has so much depth to it. There's a lot of different class options and they all play differently, and the combinations of items you get are always new and interesting every run. This is a roguelike that has enough different possibilities in it that every run presents the potential of getting some really awesome combo that you haven't seen before, which is for me what really drives a roguelike to be endlessly replayable. The choices of items are always exciting and upgrade your heroes in interesting ways, and the possibility of getting some really good combination of class and item makes the game exciting.