D.A.M.N!

Outsmart them instead of counting on the whims of the die!

"He was one step from the finish — I froze him, and my partner picked him off."

"He brought out his mighty Tank, and I put a rocket into it, straight onto a mine that sent the big guy back to base."

"I needed a three and nothing else — my partner cast the Underdog's ult and left the number panel to me. Sadly, a rival knocked the Underdog out a step before my win. Why did I forget to raise the shield?! :("

That is what almost every turn looks like here: every move has an answer, and every answer has one of its own.

Before we made this game, we spent years inspired by the classic — and arrived at rules where, on that same classic board, skill really does decide a lot.

Play solo against bots, with friends at one screen, online with cross-play — or mix it all in one match. With a mouse, a gamepad, or a finger on a touchscreen.

The card mode

Plan combinations several turns ahead, so every turn sets up the next one. Run the game with cards instead of letting the die run you.

Everyone plays the same deck: movement cards, action cards (some of them very strong!) and junk cards you'd rather avoid. The card mode has three difficulty levels — they set how much junk clogs the deck, and the Scout class becomes your filter against it, which pays off most at the higher ones.

Hands are open, which is what makes playing at one screen easy — and what lets you "suggest" your rivals' moves worse than the ones they were hoping to find.

The die

It hasn't gone anywhere: three of the rule sets still use it. Two of the four leave the classic untouched — out of respect for it, and for the people who love it. Or for anyone who is simply more comfortable with a die.

The game also settles the old suspicion that haunts every digital dice board game. After each match, it shows a fairness score for the die across three measures: the average roll, how evenly the faces came up, and how long the same-face streaks ran. No "the game is rigging it" — just the numbers.

Classes

The game already has four classes: Tank, Saboteur, Scout and Underdog. Each one carries a passive it always has, and an ult of its own. They are described in detail inside the game, under Rules, on the "Classes & Ults" tab.

If you want, class chips can be added even to the classic rule sets.

Play, counter-play, co-op

Here almost every move has an answer.

• You can knock out anyone except the Tank. But even the Tank goes back to base if it takes out a Saboteur — the two of them together.

• An active ult shields the whole team. Knock out the chip that cast it, though, and the shield drops from all the rest.

• Freeze an enemy chip and it won't move for a turn. Rockets are the answer to that: they thaw your own chips and your partner's.

• The "Block action cards" card shuts off every enemy action for a turn: no swaps, no teleports, no thawing at the worst possible moment.

Team play

Any rule set can be played every player for themselves, but it is the card mode where team play gives you the most that is new:

• A rival near the finish and out of your reach? Hit them with a rocket to throw them back closer to your partner, then freeze them on your next move. They will have a hard time getting free on their turn, and your partner can pick off what was out of reach a minute ago.

• Spent a powerful ult and waiting for its recharge card? Your partner can help, if that card reaches them first ;).

• Your partner can thaw your chips with their rockets.

• "Block action cards" shuts off your opponents' actions, but not your partner's — their cards keep working.

• The Underdog's ult opens a panel for picking a number. Don't use it yourself and it passes to your partner, who picks instead.

Play 2 vs 2 when the pairs are even, or try 2 vs 1 and 2 vs 1 vs 1 when two newcomers take on more experienced players.

Rules you shape

Sometimes you sit down to play and the rules are not the ones you are used to — and it grates. That is why any rule set here can be tuned in detail. Put your favourite rules together once, and play that way from then on.

Even for the classic you can choose what earns an extra move, whether there are safe zones and how many of them, and so on. Want more depth — add classes with passive abilities, ults on top, and set the conditions under which they recharge.

There is even Peaceful mode, so you can play with the youngest in the family, the ones who take it hard when a chip one step from the finish gets knocked back.

Worlds and the people in them

The game already has several atmospheric worlds, and you can play in the setting of any of them. Each world brings its own ambient sounds, music and race.

Races are an animated cosmetic skin for the classic chips: in gameplay terms they give no advantage. More worlds and races are planned.

Mix players however you like

One game can hold online players, hot-seat players and bots together. You can add a hot-seat player to any online seat, and bots come in three difficulty levels. If someone drops for a moment, a bot steps into their seat so nobody waits, and they take it back the moment they return.

Stats and awards

The game counts everything — and shows no less. Successful plays light up right in the match: your first knockout, your first chip at the finish, a knockout on a chip you have just bounced into a rival with a rocket, and plenty more.

After every match a window opens automatically with the highlights for each player: knockouts, losses, rockets, freezes, distance, points...

From the main menu there is a separate window with your all-time stats, gathered across every match you play.

The same window holds the history of the matches you have played.

Save and pick up anywhere

The game auto-saves at the start of every turn, on every player's device at once. So even if the power cuts out for everyone at the same moment, you can restore the match from anyone's auto-save and lose no more than a single turn. Start on one device and finish on several, or the other way around. Didn't finish a game around the table? Pick it back up online by joining the room's save by invitation. And link your own devices together to pull saves between them straight from the cloud.

Demo and full version

What the demo includes:

• Four rule sets, each one adjustable to your liking.

• Two of the four chip classes, Tank and Saboteur, in the rule sets with a die. Card matches in the demo are played without classes.

• Online for two players, with Remote Play Together supported. Text chat included.

• Bot matches and play at one screen, with no limits.

• Two save slots, kept on your own computer.

• English, Ukrainian, German, French.

What the full version adds:

• All four classes, Tank, Saboteur, Scout and Underdog, card matches included.

• Online for up to four players, with voice chat.

• The host can drop out and the match carries on.

• Match history.

• Far more save slots, kept in the cloud.

Where this game came from

For me it started back in 2003 — as a student I played one of the digital adaptations of the classic with friends over a beer. Later, when I had children of my own, we played it as a family.

We liked how the game looked and how it sounded, the knockouts most of all. But in time it started to grate that so much of it hung on the die: often you could tell from the start who was going to win.

So I made my own copy, one we could change ourselves. As an experiment we switched an extra move on and off — for a knockout, for a six, for reaching the finish. That is where the idea came from: let any player tune this as easily as we did.

Then came classes with passive abilities — and suddenly the order in which you brought your chips out mattered. Ults followed, and they gave team play a point. That is how D.A.M.N! Dice came to be.

But what players could do still hung on the die: it decided your options, and it left no room to plan ahead or to agree on a plan with your partner.

That is when it became clear this could only be solved by replacing the die with cards, several of which you can play in a single turn. And the arguments along the lines of:

• of course you won, you drew swaps while I drew turn skips;

• you kept rolling sixes and I kept rolling ones;

• is it worth the risk of stepping on a "?" cell…

simply went away. That is how D.A.M.N! Cards was born, and it became the face of our game.

We have been playing it 2 vs 2 as a family for months now and we are not tired of it. The emotions in front of the screen run high enough that one mouse has already been broken trying to stop a winning move. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do ;)!

Outsmart, not outdice!