an easier, breezier, chill roguelike "deck"-builder

Dicey Dungeons gets a lot of flak in comparison to Slay the Spire, but the games are trying to do entirely different things. DD is much more of a 20-30 minute game where you want to just knock out a quick run, whereas StS feels a lot more like embarking on a long journey and grinding away at advantages over time. in Dicey Dungeons, you can mess around with weapons, see how they feel, swap them out between fights (unless you're playing as Witch or Jester i guess). there's less of a commitment of adding new items to your pool than there is adding a card to your deck in Slay the Spire.

however, this DOES mean that Dicey Dungeons does end up lacking in the overall depth that a game like StS has. often times on each character, i had found a build that worked very well and i didn't really see much reason to deviate from it other than novelty. a lot of the items want specific other items, so there's not as much weird cross-pollination between strategies or the playstyles between characters.

this is the game's downside to me, but more than likely an advantage to others. it makes it really easy to pick up for the first time, and the actual gameplay leans very much into the "just one more run" aspect that a lot of these games tap into. even when the game was at its most challenging (aka: Levels 4 and 6+ of the Witch, lmao), it felt fun to keep going and trying to succeed.