Dice Legends Review

Rolling into a crowded genre

Dice Legends, developed and published by Big Bite Games and Ad Luna, is a roguelike deckbuilder that arrives in a genre already thick with Slay the Spire's descendants, and it knows it -- several of its own reviewers cite that lineage directly. Its pitch for standing out is mechanical: rather than a flat energy pool spent on cards each turn, each of its three playable heroes rolls dice tied to their own die type -- a d6, a d8, and a d12 respectively -- and those rolled values are then assigned across available cards to activate them. The game's Steam news history confirms a clean, unambiguous original release on 10 October 2025, preceded by a February 2025 Next Fest demo, an August 2025 public demo, a public playtest in early October, and an announced release date and pricing just ahead of launch -- followed by an unusually fast, sustained patch cadence that included a major difficulty and balance overhaul barely three weeks after release. At NZ$28.99, it sits at the pricier end for an indie roguelike deckbuilder, and its review sample -- 255 reviews at the time of writing, 197 positive, Mostly Positive -- reflects a genuine split between reviewers who like where the game is headed and reviewers who feel it launched before it was ready.

The praise side of that split is specific and consistent. One detailed review describes the core loop plainly: "Dice Legends takes the familiar foundations of a roguelike deckbuilder and gives them a clever identity by making dice just as important as the cards themselves... this creates a satisfying mixture of planning, probability, and adaptation." Another reviewer, comparing the three heroes directly, notes that the difference between a low-variance d6 build and a high-variance d12 build creates genuinely different tactical pressure run to run, calling it "a compelling hook." The pixel art and music draw the sample's most consistent praise of all -- reviewers who otherwise recommend against buying still make a point of calling out "the art for the cards and the pixel art for the characters" as strong, and the soundtrack is repeatedly singled out as fitting without becoming repetitive.

Set against that praise, the negative side of the sample converges overwhelmingly on one theme: the game's launch-state stability. Reports recur with striking consistency across independent reviewers -- saving and returning to a fight reverting players to the state before that fight began (letting the same bug also be exploited to dodge a bad matchup), equipment slots becoming permanently stuck and unusable after unequipping an item, full stat-point allocations resetting between sessions despite equipped items that should have preserved them, and more than one independent report of literally invisible, unkillable enemies forcing players to force-close the game to continue. One reviewer with over 2,900 minutes logged writes bluntly that "the save functionality doesn't work. It resets progress or corrupts the character in some way. This is unacceptable for a roguelike." A separate detailed review argues the game's difficulty curve compounds the frustration at the very end of a run, describing the final "Last Human" boss's damage negation, blocking, and healing as scaling so aggressively that builds which had cleared everything before it "quite literally [have] no chance to defeat him."

A second, quieter thread of criticism concerns originality and depth rather than stability. Several reviewers, clearly well-versed in the genre, note directly that Dice Legends isn't the first game to marry dice mechanics with a Slay the Spire-style structure, naming SpellRogue, Astrea, and Dice & Fold as prior examples and arguing the dice hook alone doesn't distinguish it enough on its own -- one writes flatly that "there are like 4 better dice rogue-likes I could recommend instead." Content depth draws a related complaint: reviewers estimate roughly 15 hours of content at launch, several specifically noting that only the first of the three heroes feels fully realised relative to the others, and describing build variety and card pool depth as thinner than genre leaders once the early excitement of a first run wears off. A related complaint concerns build determinism rather than raw content volume: one reviewer with over 4,400 minutes logged writes that "you're able to consistently get the same builds over and over again," arguing that once a player learns the strongest item and card combinations, there aren't many deep decisions left to make across a run -- a critique specifically about long-term replay depth rather than launch bugs. A handful of reviewers add Steam Deck-specific complaints too, citing a lack of controller support and a default UI that renders text uncomfortably small on a handheld screen.

It's worth noting the developer's response has been active and visible: the patch history shows cloud saves added within six weeks, a major difficulty rebalance inside the first month, and continued content and quality-of-life updates running well into 2026, addressing several of the specific complaints raised at launch. Several reviewers explicitly acknowledge this, framing their thumbs-down as conditional rather than final -- one writes directly to the developer, "you can cook this one for longer and make it the game it deserves to be" -- which suggests the Mostly Positive rating reflects a rough launch more than a fundamentally broken idea.

Verdict

Dice Legends pairs a genuinely clever central mechanic -- dice rolls that feed directly into card activation, with each hero built around a distinct die type -- with strong pixel art and music, and its Mostly Positive review sample reflects real affection for where the design is headed. But a widely repeated pattern of save corruption, stuck items, and unfair late-game scaling, alongside fair comparisons to more polished genre predecessors, means this is a game best watched for further patches rather than bought at full price today.