Slice
& Dice

Slice and Dice is a small retro adventure game you play by rolling dice to progress with your five heroes. More than this, the faces on the dice represent your party and determine not only who can attack or defend but how likely you are to roll them. It's a game that wears its mechanics on its sleeve and then cleverly invites you to shift the odds in your favour, if you can only work out how best to do that.

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At the start of each run, you have five heroes with different skills (Warrior, Acolyte, Adept, Thief and Defender. Each of their skills is mapped to the face of the dice so that when you roll the result determines the move you can make. Battles continue with first you and then your enemies taking turns to roll dice and assigning moves.

The twist is that you can see the results of these rolls before the attacks are resolved. You can then carefully assign your actions to counter as well as attack the enemies. This is extended as you play repeated rounds by the addition of items that improve the strength of attacks or parries. You can also unlock new types of characters with their own new abilities.

The charm here is not only the pixelated visuals and simulated dice rolls but that you have so many ways to adjust the outcome of each run. On the surface, things seem simple enough to plough through without much thought, but soon you realise that how you set up your team (and the related dice) at the start of the game greatly impacts your performance. Add to that the ability to reroll dice as well as undo choices as often as you like, and it turns into a never-ending loop of trial, error and tweaking.

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Our examiner, Jo Robertson, first checked Slice & Dice 19 months ago. It was re-examined by Andy Robertson and updated 3 weeks ago.