an upper echelon "roguelike" that strikes me more as compact turn-based strategy With Roguelike Elements, although the more I play it the more apparent the Slay the Spire influence gets. I haven't played that game, I can't really get into cards and deckbuilders, but this one pulled me in with its dice system. fantastic combat, the entire game is the combat system lol. there's a solid handful of different game modes so something's bound to tickle your fancy. surprising amounts of strategizing and depth to really dig into. it's been out for years on itch.io (including a mobile version where it feels right at home!) but I'm glad it got another major update and a Steam release. it deserves more attention drawn to it, it's awesome!

I'm a real-time action enjoyer, at times borderline monkey brain button mash type stuff but I've been trying to move on past that. my preferred playstyle is calculated aggression. Slice & Dice manages to make tactical turn-based battles very appealing to my button mashing ass. thanks to the ingenious undo feature and the way turns play out, the best defense is often a good offense (as stated by the dev in the in-game tips) and I love it. being able to undo every action you make aside from rerolls is easily my favorite feature here, it's the perfect middle ground between trivialized difficulty and brutal punishment. this isn't a more complex traditional roguelike where you must commit to every decision you make to avoid death, so its inclusion is perfect. experimentation is encouraged and promotes learning its systems for you to make more informed decisions in the future; this is extended further with auto-healing between battles, another welcomed addition as always.

I'm also really fond of its "horizontal progression" as some refer to it as nowadays. instead of accumulating upgrades between runs i.e. vertical progression, knowledge is power and the only thing stopping you besides unlucky RNG and a lack of knowledge is your own mistakes. I want to play these kinds of games for different build choices -- randomized ones in this case -- and on the fly decision-making, and Slice & Dice has both in spades. I love how much thought goes into your items, heroes, dice rolls, everything. for a game that seems one-note the potential ceiling for min-maxing is crazy, not to mention the optimization involved in each turn down to every single action you take. as a friend pointed out to me while discussing meta-progression, content is only locked in this game to allow the additional layers of depth to slowly reveal themselves; for once I don't have any real qualms with the achievement-based unlock system and would in fact say it's implemented very very well.

if you took a combat system this refined and built around it with that same level of quality you'd have something truly incredible, but that's not to say I find it lacking in any meaningful regard. it's a fantastic game as is, the only thing Slice & Dice possibly does wrong is.. I guess the constraints of being a roguelike? the best way I can put it is that it's basically RNG: The Game. those who dislike an excess focus on luck and randomness might feel a lot differently about it, but to me it's one of its strengths. aside from its unlockables it's missing that special something that keeps me coming back without feeling tired and aimless, a core issue of its condensed nature which seems to persist across just about every roguelike/lite I've played thus far. usually I won't get enough out of extensively repeating it beyond the initial interest unless there's some kind of short-term incentive like unlocks or self-imposed challenges, but in this case it's not a mark against it. ~70 hours of gameplay is nothing to scoff at. it still managed to pull me back in to fully learn it and how much there is to appreciate about it. ...except the frustrating amount of enemies with dice sides that summon MORE enemies - those are the bane of my existence. screw you Hexia and Wendigo.