"There's a robot mod where it works in reverse. "Some of those modes are so different they're almost different characters", Cavanagh told me. ![]() On top of that, each character has six different modifiers. That Thief can nick his opponent's tools, while the Witch (Cavanagh's favourite) has a spell book that builds up over the course of each fight. It's just a constant stream of adding stuff I'm really excited about, because there's so much room to explore."Ĭavanagh's talking about the six different characters, who all begin the game with different abilities and specialised equipment. Once I had that, working on Dungeons has just been having a spreadsheet and adding a line when I think of a random thing, and that shows up in the game. "The core worked from day one, that's what made me so excited. I've played multiple early builds, each time returning to a game that's built on the potential of some impressive initial scaffolding. Deployed correctly, they can be a powerful driver of interesting decisions, and Dungeons is testament to that. You can immediately do that in your brain without too much stress, which is a fantastic thing." Say you roll a one and a two, you can go 'oh if I re-roll this it'll probably be higher'. You could say I stumbled into it, but I've come round to loving dice and the way they let you think about randomness in this very comprehensible way. "It turned out that combination really, really worked, which I didn't expect. It's a dice-driven deckbuilder with tools instead of cards. You accrue more equipment over the course of each run, and there's often not enough space for all your gadgets. That's when the Thief gets to break out their trusty lockpick, and split that six into two lower numbers. A six might be useless to a Thief wielding a dagger that you can't use with any number higher than a four, for instance. Obviously that's a very figured-out genre, so I thought about ways I could do something different, and dice seemed like the right direction."ĭicey Dungeons is about rolling dice, giving them filthy looks, then massaging your results into something more palatable. "So this started as a jam game at some point last year - I really wanted to make a deckbuilder inspired by Dream Quest. Plus, it turns out, he is totally into dice. Still, it's unusual for a videogame to revolve around a board game component some might (mistakenly) view as archaic. I'd unintentionally put Cavanagh on the defensive, my tongue perhaps too hidden inside my cheek. ![]() "It's not like I'm especially into dice!" he objected. "Why did you make a game about dice and randomness?" "People hate dice and randomness," I said. That would describe Dicey Dungeons, Cavangh's latest and (according to him) greatest game.īack at GDC in March, I got the chance to ask him about it. They're not, notably, deckbuilding roguelikes that revolve around dice manipulation. They're crucibles where the sting of failure is treated by the balm of an instant restart. Terry Cavanagh is known for making difficult games, including the likes of Super Hexagon and VVVVVV, two tough-as-nails gauntlets that challenge digital dexterity and reaction speeds.
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