Rune Dice asks the question, “What if rolling dice were more awesome?” Unfortunately, Smart Raven Studio seems to have treated the question as rhetorical. While Rune Dice contains some great spritework, the short runtime, lack of any sort of balance, and reliance on Random Number Generation (RNG) turn what could’ve been a very satisfying ‘one more session’ experience into a mobile-game-like grind.
Your task is simple in Rune Dice: merge dice to beat up baddies. While dice rolls informing gameplay in the background are nothing new, here your dice are front and center on a board, taking up most of the screen. You start with a normal die with a value of one, and when you merge it with another die, those dice become a two-die, and you deliver two damage to whichever enemy is in front. While this sounds fairly cut and dry, before you run, you select a class, and their dice will show up on the board, as well as dice from more dangerous enemies. These dice have a wide variety of effects, from dealing damage to stunning an enemy to generating shields. There are also generic dice that will show up, which offer coins, the ability to damage all enemies, or healing. I had hoped the eight classes provided a unique and fun reason to start another run, but unfortunately, the amount of RNG and lack of actually useful class abilities hurt the experience greatly.
While the Rogue and the Warrior offer balanced experiences with enough sustainability, damage, and other effects to make it through even hard mode encounters for the most part, the game is determined to drain your HP to the point that I only had access to the first three levels of the game for the majority of my playtime. Enemy formations usually have a ranged character at the back who can attack without fear of reprisal, and in the latter stages of the game, damage from them cannot be avoided. I tried numerous strategies, but some classes, like the Bard, require very specific Relics to actually survive a run. This is combined with the fact that some class abilities don’t actually deal damage, and healing dice do not either. While there are some good items to grab, your prize pool after defeating enemies is far too random, and shopping can be a complete bust for the same reason. Most damningly, unlocking more options does not increase the quality of options.
Due to my lack of success in advancing to the Desolate Sands biome and the Void Circus biome, I resigned myself to trying different classes and doing a normal mode run of the first stage. Even this proved a challenge as I would take a higher-level character, or even a max-level character, and somehow still fail. There is too much tension between using class dice to level up your character and making the correct decision between Runes, Relics, and dice. I previewed Rune Dice, and at the time, I hoped they would reduce the stringency of dice rolls to make them a bit more manageable, and I questioned their decision to deny players the ability to merge matches. It just feels bad when I enter a new fight, and there are no available matches for my one-value die. I also feel like certain dice aren’t magnetized enough – generally, you’ll be able to merge up to a five die before the board resets. I eventually just gave up on actually matching six-value Big Bada Boom dice and Treasure Chest dice. Even when I did match Big Bada Boom dice, the board shake, which damages every enemy and is supposed to generate matches, did next to nothing. While you can use Runes, these precious resources are often needed for elite battles and the boss battle at the end of the run, if you have any left. The system Smart Raven Studio has implemented is far too fickle, so that even supposed power-ups are actually detrimental. If I increase my starting die with the Throwing Die Booster Relic, this may make it harder to match a 1-value die. If I use the Trickster’s Horn Relic to produce merges that “skip” a number, that may invalidate either even or odd matches, which can be disastrous.
The Final Word
Rune Dice is a short, frustrating experience made even more so by a lack of difficulty tuning. I genuinely was in disbelief when the cutoff for content after the first third of the game was reached, which led me to listen to the same music and repeat the easiest level nearly a dozen times if not more to only learn the Bard is incapable of actually besting the latter stages. Rune Dice was already a novelty in concept, and in practice, you may just want to grab a pair of dice and roll those instead.
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