Slice & Dice is a roguelike dungeon crawler by indie developers tann (programmer) and a3um (artist).
You control an adventuring party of five characters, fighting monsters across 20 levels of a procedurally-generated dungeon. Your characters are represented by six-sided dice: each turn, you roll the dice to determine what actions your characters can perform (with opportunities to reroll any less-favourable results). Enemy attacks are also decided by dice rolls, and are telegraphed before the start of your turn so that you can plan your own actions accordingly. After each combat, you receive either the opportunity to level up a character or an equipable item, both of which can improve your dice.
The full game can be found on itch.io
and Steam, as well as on Android and iOS. A demo covering the first four levels can be downloaded for free.
This game contains examples of the following tropes:
- After-Combat Recovery: A hero that dies in battle will begin the next battle at half health. Heroes that didn't die are restored to full health for the next battle.
- A.I. Roulette: Just like your characters, monsters roll dice to determine what action they can perform. Unlike you, the monsters don't have any opportunity to reroll their dice.
- An Adventurer Is You: Each of character can be one of many different classes, meaning that there are many different roles they could potentially fill. That said, each character tends to fit into a standard role-playing game archetype:
- Orange heroes are usually stealth-based or use ranged attacks, often a Fragile Speedster, The Sneaky Guy or a Jack of All Stats.
- Yellow heroes are offensive fighters, usually having the highest direct damage potential.
- Grey heroes are defensive fighters, sometimes dipping into Magic Knight, Bare-Fisted Monk or The Bard.
- Red heroes are healers, although some variants also have offensive potential through Life Drain or Status Infliction Attacks.
- Blue heroes are magic users.
- Green heroes, added in version 3.0, are usually non-human or inanimate and tend to have very unusual abilities.
- Asteroids Monster: Slimers spawn smaller slimelets when damaged. The Slime Queen, a possible stage eight boss, takes this to another level, summoning slimers when damaged.
- Attack Reflector: Many enemies have the "spiky" property which means they deal some amount of damage to the attacker when they are attacked. Usually the damage dealt to the attacker is a fixed number, but Hexia's "Pain Mirror" ability inflicts damage equal to the damage Hexia receives.
- Bilingual Bonus: The "Ludus" character takes her name from the Latin word for "game". Of all characters, her dice most resembles a traditional dice, with pip values ranging from one to six and placed such that opposite sides add up to seven. The Evil Counterpart "Sudul" has the same faces on their dice, but reversed.
- Borrowin' Samedi: The Baron, who wears a top hat, has a ghoulish appearance, and summons bones.
- Degraded Boss: Some stage four bosses have a chance of returning as regular enemies in later stages.
- Drama-Preserving Handicap: The Hand, a potential final boss with especially strong attacks, inverts this trope. His passive ability (literally called "handicap") gives a boost to all your heroes' dice.
- Enemy Summoner: Many monsters do this, often summoning minions which can themselves summon minions of their own. For example, Hexia summons demons, who in turn summon imps, who in turn summon skeletons. The Grave does not have any attacks other than summoning skeletons, making it a Mook Maker.
- Flunky Boss: Many bosses qualify, but of particular note is the Lich, who fights alongside four skeleton minions, regularly summons more, and cannot easily be attacked while other skeletons are in play.
- Gathering Steam: The Era modifier increases the pips of the affected sides by 1 per turn with no limit, so the longer the battle goes one the more effective that side becomes. The Cocoon item is an example of one, where while it inflicts -1 pips to all sides it also gives the Era modifier. The Inevitable is dangerous because of having this modifier.
- Increasingly Lethal Enemy: The Inevitable, where all its sides have the Era modifier, meaning that the longer the battle goes on the more damage it will deal, eventually being able to take down heroes even with a large amount of shields. Not helping is that it becomes immune to damage during the rest of the turn if its HP reaches every 5th interval, as well as one of its attacks does a Life Drain.
- Metal Slime: The "chest" (and the bigger "sarcophagus" variant introduced in version 3.0) are monsters with the following unusual quirks:
- They show up more rarely than other monsters.
- They are the only monsters which provide a bonus reward (specifically, a low-tier item) when killed.
- They must be defeated within a certain number of turns or they will flee from combat.
- One-Hit Kill: The Hand has its rightmost side do this to the topmost hero, so unless that hero is immune to death or uses dodge they will die, no questions asked.
- Permadeath: Usually averted on an individual basis. If a character dies, they will usually come back to life at half their health in the next combat, although some items and curses adjust this rule. If everyone in your party dies, however, it's game over.
- Regenerating Health: Some Red heroes and certain items and abilities can give this to your heroes, which can stack with each other and can counter poison. The Trolls and Troll King enemies have this by default, with Trolls restoring per turn 1 HP and the Troll King 2 HP.
