This is gonna be a long one, so buckle up, make yourself a cup of something, and let’s go!
Hey everybody, Rafał (Creative Director) here! A lot has happened since Oleh (Lead Developer) last communicated with you during the February Steam Next Fest. And by a lot, I really mean a LOT. Result? Dice Legends is getting a fresh coat of paint, new mechanics, awesome music, and new designs all across the board. The core mechanic that made so many of you like the game is still here, but the rest is so different now that we’ve actually decided to re-launch and re-announce the entire game. Both of us are really proud and all of this is super exciting. But let’s get back to the beginning!
HOW IT STARTED
A little over two years ago, Oleh began working on a game that was a tribute to the genre made popular by Slay the Spire. His ambition was to create a game that took all the things that make deckbuilding roguelikes fun and then mix them up in a creative way. His other, more bolder ambition was to give something back to the genre and community he liked so much. This is how Dice Legends got the dice part (and a big part of its soul and charm). It’s also what made the demo such a big hit during that Steam Next Fest. The game got on almost 20 THOUSAND (!!!) wishlists and motivated Oleh to work even harder to bring it to gamers worldwide. What Oleh did not know at the time is that one of those wishlists was mine.
I also love roguelike deckbuilders. I also wanted to make a game that took all the cool things from the genre and to give something back to the community. Having previously worked on Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and GWENT (the card game in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt), I had some experience under my belt already. What I also already had, was a big chunk of such a game designed on paper and tucked away in a drawer. And if that sounds like the beginning of ‘one of those stories’, well, you guessed it — it is :). Since Oleh already made a lot of the game I always wanted to make, I decided to reach out.
And this is where the real magic happened. We started talking. A lot. Like, really. I was amazed that Oleh had made almost all of this by himself – patiently coding the game, and mashing assets together. He told me how one evening he had this idea of combining the best parts of Dicey Dungeons and Slay the spire, how he worked hard in his free time, and how supportive his family and friends were (his brother Pavlo helped with card balance and enemies, while his good friend Erik helped to shape the game’s February look).
By the way, this is how the “absolute first no one will ever see this” development version of Dice Legends looked like:
…and this is how it looked when the demo was released:
On my end, I offered Oleh the perspective I gained on my previous projects. We started discussing creative directions and, soon after, we decided to develop the game together. The split was this: I’d be responsible for publishing and the creative direction, story & worldbuilding, and Oleh would remain the Lead Developer responsible for the mechanics. We joined our visions for a game that takes what’s best from a genre we both love, and are now working super hard to give all that love back in the form of ideas and a fun game you all can spend many hours playing.
HOW IT’S GOING
At the beginning of this post, I hinted at a lot of changes. Let’s look at some of them!
THE TEAM
First off, the team composition changed a lot. It was no longer Oleh full-time solo developing. Both of us agreed that if we wanted to make Dice Legends play really legendary, we needed reinforcements. Since I had experience with remote game development, as well as some contact details to talented creatives from previous projects, we began reaching out to people to join us and contribute. The core team is still me and Oleh, but we enlisted more than 10 artists to help us realize the vision for the game. Among them, we got Andriy Lukin — a fantastic graphic designer doing wonders for Dice Legends’ UI/UX. He was the first person that we got to work with us, and is often the person Oleh and I will ask for a sanity check of something. Then there’s LouisF, the super talented musician who made the soundtrack for Balatro, or the amazing RealShortGuy, who worked on Slave Zero X (we have ultra pretty animations!). Everyone on the team is pouring so much passion into this project!
VISUAL IDENTITY
Since Oleh spent most of his time developing Dice Legends solo, he utilized asset marketplaces like the Unity Store, Itch.io, and games under creative commons licenses (notably Duelyst) to build the game. I was particularly impressed with how well he combined it all together without — his words ;) — "any art sense". But it was time for an upgrade. Now, all the assets in the game are handcrafted by artists to better showcase the rich world we’re creating and reflect gameplay elements.
Before
After
With the added artistic firepower, we finally had the resources to reinvent the titular “Legends”. We went with beautifully drawn creatures, with clear, easily recognizable themes behind them. Story-wise, their fate is connected to the dice they command, and we wanted to reflect that as well.
You’ve got the Lion Paladin ARIE who uses the d6 dice to dish out damage or block against attacks. The Crow Demon Summoner KURO, who manipulates the d12 dice to summon helper creatures onto the battlefield. And (my favorite!), the Toad Assassin XIN — an agile shadow magic user that wields the d8 dice to deal crits or damage over time.
We went from this:
To this:
And, to top it off, each of the places you see on the map will produce a different battle environment when you visit a node that corresponds with it during your run!
In a nutshell, everything is now more coherent, and the quality is as good as we can make it.
Finally, and I’m most excited about this, we’ve MASSIVELY revamped the card art.
Cards went from being pretty basic like this:
…to be fully immersive, corresponding with every character’s theme (as in, every character will have their own theme for cards!). Like this:
Everything is hand-drawn by real artists and there’s no AI shenanigans in play.
This is how it looks in the game:
THE GAME
Finally, the most important thing. The game itself. It can look beautiful, but if it doesn’t play well, none of this matters. Together with Oleh, we’ve spent months discussing tweaks to how the game plays. The benefit of having a “partner in crime” is that you’re no longer alone with some decisions. The dynamic that developed between us is something that we both value very much. It works more or less like this: Oleh has a phenomenal sixth sense; he has this almost magical ability to know that something will or will not work long before it happens. What I bring into the mix is a broader perspective of several shipped projects, and an ability to translate some of that feeling to actionable briefs to other artists on the team. I consider this dynamic between us a privilege and am really happy “we found each other”.
OK, you might ask, but what does that really mean in practice? For example: we both felt that dice are a strong differentiator of Dice Legends when you look at similar games across the genre. But dice on their own are not entirely unique. There are other games with dice out there. So we needed to soul-search a bit deeper. And this is how the concept of “Controlling unpredictability” came to exist. We decided that simply treating “dice as mana” is not the aspect we wanted to focus on — it would have been too big of a simplification. Instead, we purposefully focused on the axis around which everything revolves — the combination of building a deck, choosing the right gear and items, and focusing on the unique strength a given character’s dice gives you. This was not an easy place to arrive at but we both feel we achieved the right balance thanks to Oleh’s game sense and my ability to frame it.
In gameplay terms, it means each time you play, it’s up to you to either optimize your build for every kind of roll, or “risk it” and optimize for high rolls or low rolls. Unpredictability management is key. Maybe you’ll get an item that boosts your block so you can focus more on damage, or you’ll turtle up and focus on healing and retaliatory damage. The beauty of Dice Legends is that we’re giving you so much tactical choice because there is NO “right” dice roll in this game. The amount of dice-card-item combinations that are possible along with the choices you can make are in the thousands. The perfect combination does not exist BUT the fun lies in trying to get as close to it as possible. Every dice roll is a different opportunity and the fun stems from trying to manage that.
OK, that was a lot. But I said it would be! Dice Legends is shaping up to be a dream game for us and we hope the direction we’re taking it in is as equally exciting for you.
Please play the demo, it contains the full first chapter and a pretty big taste of what’s to come.
We would also be IMMENSELY grateful if you wishlisted us. We don’t have any big publisher behind us and wishlists really help us see how well we’re doing.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this!
