DICEBONE

YOU WILL NOT DIE TODAY. YOU WILL DICE!

DiceBone: a roguelike/roguelite dungeon/dice deck-builder. 8 rounds, then endless.

A single die drops into the dark and comes up three. Three more dice tear themselves out of it and clatter onto the stone, one ring further out: the face is how many grow. Those roll. Their children roll. Somewhere in that rattling you stop reading numbers and realise you are looking at a floor plan.

The dice are rooms. The bone strung between two dice is a corridor. Every face in the tree is points, and the whole spreading thing did not exist a moment ago: you drew it out of your own hand.

A die is chaos. A bone is fate. Control the chaos: during a round you grow the dungeon and drop your own dice into it. Between rounds, at the forge, you hack the pips. Carve them, multiply your dice, destroy them, until chance is dead and your dice turn to bone. The combos emerge from the deck you build.

Each round is a floor, and each floor takes you deeper. Legends say there is a true way out, but it goes down, not up: OBLIVION. No one has ever come back from it. Maybe YOU will. Or you will be part of the bones.

EIGHT ROUNDS. EACH ONE ASKS FOR MORE.

• Each round has a target score. Reach it and the round is beaten
  
• 6 GROW a round: every tip of the tree grows one more ring
  
• A hand of 5 dice, drawn from your bag. 3 DISCARD a round
  
• Drag a die from your hand onto any die of the tree, the seed included
  
• It rolls there, and its whole branch regrows from the new face
  
• Score = chips x mult. Chips: every face in the tree
  
• Mult: your multiplied dice in the tree, and your dead dice in the pit
  
• Beaten rounds pay gold. Finish early, or crush the target, and they pay more

THE FORGE KILLS CHANCE.

• Between two rounds, the forge. Spend your gold on your dice
  
• GRAVE: carve one face to another value
  
• MULTIPLY x2: the die doubles your mult while it stands in the tree
  
• UPGRADE: d4, d6, d12, d20, the faces you carved stay
  
• THROW: into the pit, for good. Each dead die is +1 mult
  
• BONE BOX: a random die from the tiers you have unlocked
  
• Repeat a verb in the same forge and its price doubles
  
• Your bag holds 12 dice. To take one, throw one

A DIE IS CHAOS. A BONE IS FATE.

• Carve every face to the same number: the die becomes a BONE
  
• A bone always rolls that number. Nothing can change it again
  
• A carved face is final. Plan the bone before you cut

WHAT YOU MULTIPLY, ROTS.

• A multiplied die lights a fuse: green squares, one round each
  
• Make it a bone before the last grain burns, or it rots
  
• A rotten die standing in the tree divides your mult
  
• Every round, each rotten die rots another of your dice
  
• Only the pit takes it. Throw it, and it becomes +1 mult

THE FUSE: multiply twice, the fuse shortens, the last grain blinks, then the rot.


THE CONTAGION: the rot spreads at dawn. The forge throws it into the pit.

WIN AT ROUND 8. THEN GO DEEPER.

• Targets climb every round: 300 at round 1, 37,754 at round 8
  
• Beat round 8 and the run is won
  
• Then go ENDLESS: round 9, 10, and on. There is no last round
  
• In the depths the targets reach millions, then billions
  
• Beat a target a hundred times over in one move: the d100 is yours

ENDLESS: round 8 beaten, YOU WIN, then the forge opens on round 9.


x100: one bone on the seed, a hundred times the target.

SIX DICE. ONE WALL.

• 6 tiers of dice: d4, d6, d12, d20, d60, d100. One colour each
  
• You start with 8 white d4. Reach round 3: d12. Round 5: d20
  
• Win a run: d60. Strike a target x100: d100
  
• Roguelite: the Wall keeps your unlocks and records, run after run
  
• 8 metarun slots, each with its own unlocks
  
• Veterans burn faster: the more you unlock, the shorter every fuse

THE DICEMASTER LAUGHS.

• You are the Escaper, down in an ossuary of dice
  
• The Dicemaster keeps the table. He warns you at the forge door
  
• He answers to a higher power: The Hand
  
• Out of GROW and short of the target: ring the bell, and die
  
• He laughs. Never the same laugh twice in a row
  
• A clinical line tells you how short you were, and what you never forged

TAKE HIS SEAT.

• DUEL: a second player sits in the Dicemaster's chair
  
• He FREEZES a growing tip. He HACKS your faces after a beaten round
  
• You win at round 8. He wins if you die
  
• Same screen, local network or IP, or a Steam invite
  
• A duel touches no one's progression

BLACK. WHITE. BONE.

• One screen: the tree, your dice, a column of numbers
  
• The tree is drawn live, die by die. Druidic runes name the verbs
  
• Hover any die: its card tells its faces, its fuse and a line of lore
  
• Five tracks composed live by the game: OSSUARY, THE NAVE, OUBLIETTE, DICEMASTER, BONE GARDEN
  
• Bones crack, the anvil rings, the gold falls: every sound is synthesized
  
• Mouse and keyboard. Single-player and duel. 31 languages. Windows

P.S. The free demo stops after round 4: the forge, the fuse and the rot are all in, d4 to d12. The full game goes on: rounds 5 to 8, ENDLESS, the d20, the d60 and the d100.