Rune Dice review for PC, Nintendo Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X

Here’s how good Rune Dice is: it’s been enough to pull me away – at least a little bit – from my Slay the Spire II addiction. It’s not about to challenge the amount of time I’ve put into Slay the Spire II or anything, but at multiple points over the last few weeks, when I’ve had the option to play both, I’ve gone with Rune Dice.

It’s probably helped that the games are both roguelike deckbuilders, so I’ve been in the right mood for Rune Dice. But there are plenty of other roguelike deckbuilders out there that haven’t captured my attention in quite the same way, so that counts for a lot.

It also helps that Rune Dice is different enough that a direct comparison doesn’t make a lot of sense. Instead of cards, Rune Dice – as you can probably guess from the name – focuses on dice. Taking its cues from the likes of Balatro, the game is all about building up your dice so that they’re as powerful as possible, which you then use to fight all kinds of fantasy-inspired enemies like giant spiders, wizards, and plenty of minions.

This means that even if you start with mere dice, it’s not long before they start turning into bombs, lightning storms, and all kinds of other magical weapons. There’s something deeply satisfying about watching your dice bounce around the board, careening off each other and turning into bigger and bigger numbers. It’s also fun to try out the different classes of characters, and figuring out that the way to approach a run with a mage is different from how you do it as a warrior.

That said, Rune Dice lags a little behind its competition in one key area: the joy of building up a massively overpowered hand and laying waste to enemies. As fun as it is to watch die ricocheting off each other and building up chains, the game doesn’t quite match the insane chain reactions you can get in other deck builders (or, to put it in StS terms: you don’t get the thrill of getting loads of relics and innate powers, and ending a combat before the enemy even has a chance to attack).

Still, even if Rune Dice isn’t quite at the very top of the genre, it’s definitely in the upper tier. For me, the key measure of success for a roguelike deckbuilder is how often you reach the end of a run and say to yourself, “Okay, just one more, but that’s it!” – and there have been several nights where I’ve found myself getting to bed a little too late because I was sure I had one good run of dice just around the corner. If that’s not success, I don’t know what is.

Kwalee provided us with a Rune Dice PC code for review purposes.