They mirror Steam on returns. The few games I refunded on Epic were easy to process. I don’t buy as many games on Epic so there is a smaller set of games I have returned but I would not be afraid to buy a game on Epic to try out. YMMV
So I played a bit of the baby level and I’m enjoying it so far. The one thing I can’t figure out is how to get rid of an annoying overlay that shows some basic controls and blocks the map.
Pro tip: If you’re like me, you will instinctively press the space bar whenever you want to pause or unpause the game. However, that rolls your dice and every time you roll them they degrade. The “1” key is the pause key. Good news is you can remap it so that R rolls the dice and the space bar pauses, as God intended.
The dice take long enough to finish their “assignments” (at normal speed)
that the game doesn’t feel frantic at all. So far. I’m still playing at the second lowest difficulty, but I haven’'t seen anything to indicate that higher levels speed the game up.
But buildings can be.
Oh that’s good to know. I was not sure from the videos. The one time eating head scratcher I can see is planning out building placement.
Hmm…
I read the review and it sounds like he doesn’t like dice games? That’s the only thing I got from his review is that the game is complicated and he doesn’t like the game due to the RNGness of the dices.
“But you have to roll the right tasks first. If none of your dies are showing ‘build’ but you need something built, you’ll have to roll the ones that are capable of building and hope for the best. If the best doesn’t happen, roll again. And again. And fucking again.”
Why assign a game for review to someone who hates the fundamental mechanic of the game? It could be the greatest dice-based game in the history of ever, and this jamoook would slam it.
Another reason to not pay attention to RPS.
Tbh, that felt like a pretty well written article to me? The reviewer was driven slightly mad, but they still managed to get across the features and objectives in a way that I now feel more informed about the game?
Entertaining And Informative… Works for me…
Going to keep an eye on this. There’s load of elements in here that sound very much up my street, bit I think I’ll let it take the brunt of first contact and see how the initial patch response comes out
It read to me like there was a vital missing link for dice games where you can do something valuable with your missed rolls? The review seems to mention lots of suboptimal options (which are fine), but also that those suboptimal options locked in your dice for a time so you weren’t able to roll them for the desired success (less good).
I played it a bit on the Switch. It seems interesting, but I think the controls are really clunky. Might improve when I get used to it. It feels a bit cramped on the small screen, haven’t tried it in docked mode yet. The screen gets pretty filled up with buildings and it is a bit of a hassle to get an overview at times.
So far my main gripe besides the controls is that it is real-time - but I knew that before I bought it, and it is more a matter of preference. With the timer and incursions it does feel like the continuous time element makes sense in the game.
My biggest gripe is that you can’t zoom out and see the entire map.
Agreed. Regardless of the reviewer’s anti-dice prejudice, the review was a lot more than just “herp derp don’t like dice.” This passage in particular did a great job of conveying “NOT FOR JUSTAGUY2”:
To even get to that point was a struggle bordering on sisyphean. Swarms of Others were running at me constantly, even as I had to build more towers (2-3 builders, 6 wood), heal or bless more soldiers (1-2 herbs, 1-2 prayer), replace losses (2 iron, 1 peasant), get the crops in (2 labour), put out the constant, constant fires (1 labour no wait now it’s 3? What? Why? How the hell is that even on fire AGAIN?), brew more beer for thawing (1 labour, 2 wheat, for which I need another 2 labour, which oh goddamn it I need them to put out the fire, hang on didn’t I have more soldiers than OH MY GOD ANOTHER FIRE? WHAT IN THE ABSOLU-), upgrade that new soldier (1 herb, 1 gold), mine more stone to rebuild… wait what just collapsed? Did I just lose a brewery or am I going to accidentally build two again? How did that peasant get the plague?
That pretty much convinced me that this game is not for me.
Yeah, sadly, same here. I like city builders and think dice are neat, but I hate frustration, lol.
Now I am really confused as to whether i want it. Maybe I’ll just wait for a sale and let it languish on my wishlist.
I don’t know about that description. The game is not frantic. Often I am sitting waiting for timers to count down. Im not bragging. I am still a big time newb, but that description reads like a first game when someone doesn’t understand enhancement, class happiness, or that you can play nearly the whole game paused. Or maybe it was the wrong review assignment sent to the wrong person.
That said, I have the Switch version and I feel what @Jorn_Weines is getting at. It is technically sound with solid graphics and performance. However, I can see how a mouse would be very helpful. The screen feels cramped too. Im not sure why. Maybe the UI is too large? Looking for tool tips are both WAY too easy /obnoxious to find (location tool tips) and others are a pain in the rear to dig down to without a mouse (season info). Im struggling to have the controls click and it’s getting in the way of my fun. Hopefully my brain will adapt soon. I think drag and drop (you know, PLACEMENT) of dice would be a lot more intuitive as would mouse over tool tips.
Interesting design, although the real-time city-builder approach feels terribly wrong for what they’re attempting, especially jammed as it is into this godawful touchscreen UI nonsense. That’s too high a price to pay for yet another game about having to wait for one piece of wood to build a brewery and, oh look, I waited too long and now it’s winter and I need the wood for a heater I have to manually keep stocked with wood.
If you want to make a game that plays like a boardgame, you have to understand the appeal of boardgames. But Dice Legacy does not understand the appeal of boardgames. It might be a decent resource management city builder, but I’ll never know because I have no interest in spending my time scrolling up and down Ringworld while I manage its poorly paced real-time survival nonsense.
As @justaguy2 hinted upthread, there’s really no reason to play this awkward thing in a world where we already have the superlative Axis and Acres:
Speaking of…reinstalling now.
-Tom
Yeah, I have about 100 hours in that one. It is excellent. I think I’ll boot that back up.
I finished a run on the standard scenario.
I will reaffirm my stance that the game is not frantic. I basically toggled the pause to plan and execute everything besides dice placement. Building and research can be done while paused. I got into a rhythm of button presses on the Switch such that it was a non issue. The only thing that tripped me up was my own brain farts on dice roll versus die lock (left and right bumper respectively) which led to personal frustration when I had a plan all lined up. I’d say the pacing of the game is mostly pause, plan, lock, unpause, place, wait, wait, repeat. There is enough waiting that pausing became less and less of a thing. Towards the last 1/3 of the Winter default scenario, I was speeding up time then going back to normal when a die finished. I essentially learned a juggle of time windows. Well, engine momentum was a factor too.
I get the instinct to want the game as a fully turn based game and more so an argument that I played it like one. But, for my experience, I think the real time elements added something I would not want taken away. Especially when it comes to heat in the winter and the others in the warmer seasons.
That said, the higher difficulties take away the pause function. I am thinking that would be a lot harder especially as it goes with scarcer resources and tougher others. Still, perhaps once someone got to that skill it would be excruciating waiting minutes for dice to come back.
Besides the real time nature, I enjoyed Dice Legacy. It is fairly unique. The dice sure were dice from time to time as I just could not get the faces I needed. This was even true after I had enhanced, forged, and enhanced again some of them to insane degrees. Really that frustrated me more than time as rolling and rerolling was chewing up resources. Well, winter/ burner tower time was a real time element that was tough at times. Even with that, I enjoyed the seasonal gloom of dealing with raiders in summer, but always dreading (and spatially planning for) that nasty blue winter ticks creeping down the time arc. I had some really tense winters as I had to time and cycle burner towers to keep the critical districts alight as the wood, food, and ale ran out as I barely held on for the spring. Eventually I got a pretty good combo of research and town edicts to make winter irrelevant which felt sort of like the momentum and built combos of a deck builder. It felt good to get the engine running.
That said, I’m not sure I’ll play it more for the new governors or scenarios though. The games run long and there is virtually nothing to fuel consequential runs. It is barely “legacy”. It is more in the old school definition of rogue like and not rogue light. Each run is random and functionally nothing carries over.
The update will feature a brand new system called Memories. Memories are a new system that is introduced into the game and that influences everything else. In essence, Memories are modifiers that can appear and be collected inside Locations or dropped by Threats.
Additional changes and improvements
The biggest change we’re going to introduce is the ability to manipulate dice while the game is paused. In other words, Full Active Pause. We understand that some players would like to take their time to make decisions without the time pressure attached to it. While this was not the way the game was envisioned, we understand that some players are seeking a different kind of experience and as such we’re going to introduce this as an option.
Effectively, difficulties and pause are being de-coupled, allowing any difficulty to be played with Active Pause. We’re splitting the pause options into three: No Pause, Classic (as it is currently) and Tabletop (full active pause). We leave to the player the decision on how they want to play.
Furthermore, we’re introducing full rebindable hotkeys, accessibility options - including options for colorblind folks, and various improvements to the interface and the balancing of the game.
The future of Dice Legacy
We have more to come beyond the Memories update and we have plans for more content and improvements, including new Scenarios, systems buildings and Dice Classes.