Ever wondered what Balatro would be like as a dice game instead? Well, probably not, but Dice With Death is here to show you exactly what that’d look like! It’s currently in early access, but it’s already extremely addicting, at least for me. Here are my thoughts on it so far!
Full disclosure: I received a review copy from the developers.
A Friendly Game With the Reaper
As it says on the tin, the game is literally just you playing dice with the personification of death. Don’t expect some deep hidden narrative about the acceptance of death or whatever. It’s just a fun little pastime with the Grim Reaper as, in his own words, “there is little else to do here” as your chosen character sits and processes their untimely demise.
There isn’t a true end goal besides pushing the game to its limits and seeing how far you can get, though to be fair, I haven’t “finished” it yet due to how much it ramps up.
This isn’t where the similarities with Balatro end, because the gameplay itself is somewhat similar.
“Poker” Dice – The Basics
How the game works is that you roll a set of six-sided dice and bank some of them if they form a scoring hand. These “hands” are mainly based on poker hands, which include pairs, a straight, or even a full house.
For example, if you have two dice that landed on “1” and three dice with “3” on them, you can select them all to form a full house.
After banking a set of dice, you can either pass or continue rolling. Passing will deal whatever score you’ve accumulated as damage to Death. However, you can also risk it and roll again with your remaining dice. If you don’t get a scoring hand, however, then you’ll fumble and pass with zero damage dealt.
Ramping Complexity
With the basics out of the way, here’s where it gets wacky and increasingly unpredictable. Throughout a run, you’ll be given opportunities to add a relic to your arsenal. These have varying effects, much like the relics you’ll encounter in other roguelikes such as Slay the Spire.
While some of them heal or protect you, others can deal damage to Death when certain conditions are met, or even generate consumable items to help you get an advantage.
On top of that, you also get to unlock new types of dice. Much like the relics, these also have varying abilities and don’t always have the typical numbers you’d see on a regular die.
For example, each side of Midas’ die only has a value of zero, but it increases the value of scored hands while it’s in your set. The Treasure Cube, on the other hand, only has sixes and ones on its faces, and it can generate new relics if you roll a one.
At the start of each run, you start with a set of six dice. As a freebie, you get to pick a single relic and one special type of die to start with. You get to shift your build around throughout the rounds, but stay on your toes, as you’re not the only one with special abilities.
Death itself will warn you that they’ll be “cheating” too, and the game throws all sorts of curveballs at you as you progress through a run.
It gets kinda unfair at times, really, as the Grim Reaper will eventually start playing a lot of extra dice and even prevent the first instance of death. It’ll also start collecting relics of its own, which can really amp up the pressure and occasionally tempt you to make riskier plays.
I like it, though. It gets hilariously chaotic later on, with all of the effects that you can barely keep up with happening on both sides of the table. On that note, I do have a few issues with how stuff is presented in the current version.
A log that shows exactly what happened in a turn would be incredibly helpful. Maybe I just missed something in the UI that does this, but the text above the screen flies by so fast that it’s hard to comprehend what’s going on in later rounds, especially if you play on double speed.
A Promising Premise
Although Dice With Death is already insanely addicting in its current state, there’s not really too much else to talk about yet as they’re still working on adding new game modes and characters to the game.
Right now, it’s definitely worth checking out if you’re a Balatro fan looking for a change of scenery. While there isn’t too much depth just yet, there are already a lot of potential builds you can try. Just be wary of how much Death cheats in later rounds, because the difficulty ramps up fast.
As I’m writing this, they’re aiming for a full release by early 2026, but you’re not going to be dry on content in the months leading up to that. At the moment, they’ve been regularly releasing small updates that add some much-needed QoL and even new features.
I look forward to seeing what it’ll be like if and when they eventually finish it, since I’m already enjoying what it offers at the moment!