The initial game modes are limited to New Game and Quick Start. But don’t fret, there are tougher dungeons to tackle should you be worried the game was getting too easy. The game can seem downright overwhelming at first, but it rewards repeated plays as the strategies reveal themselves slowly. I have a soft spot for dice placement games and I really like how ODD balances the tough die roll requirements with the ability to manipulate your rolls and the eventual consequences of failing to meet that requirement. The theme plays out strongly as the dungeon crawl is treacherous and each decision you make feels like life for death for your hero. One wrong move can swing the game wildly out of control.
The game is brutally tough and really makes you agonize over each and every decision.
The balance of choosing loot, in my opinion, becomes the most important strategy once you settle in with how the game plays.
Other skills will allow you to avoid consequences after an encounter which can be vital to keeping your heroes alive and your timer from draining so quickly. Do you load up on specific color dice to become very powerful in one area while negating another? Do you try to run a balanced hero? Skills are also very important as they offer you chances to manipulate die rolls which will inevitably be the difference between a successful and failed encounter. As for loot, early on you will be very limited in the number of dice you can hold, so you face the question of whether you should level up early or max out level one and then level up later. One bad encounter can absolutely crush you in this game as hit points are on the order of 5 or 6 hearts to begin, and you can easily lose over half, or all, of that in one encounter, so you must know when to fight and when to flee. Fleeing hurts because it results in wasted time, but there will be some fights your hero simply isn’t equipped to win. One Deck Dungeon is all about choosing your loot wisely and knowing when to flee. Should you accrue too many hit points, you die and the game is over. The timing mechanism ensures no hero is too strong before facing the boss. Other games in the genre allow characters to get so strong that the bosses are almost an afterthought once you reach them, that is certainly not the case here. One of the most impressive aspects of One Deck Dungeon is how difficult the boss fights are. If you are unprepared a single bad roll could doom you. They have some special rules and you have to attack their HPs like they are attacking you. I don’t want to spoil all of the fun of your first boss encounter, so I’ll just say that they are quite difficult. You churn through the dungeon, encounter after encounter, until it is time to face the dungeon boss. It’s basically “run through the trap at the risk of injuring yourself” or “take your time and disarm the trap at the risk of injuring yourself.” Thematically, these options make a lot of sense and always provide a tough decision which will be based on your current dice counts for particular colors. The specific choices will depend on the encounter card with more difficult encounters offering stronger loot.Įncountering traps works in almost the same way, except to begin you get to choose between two options, one has you fully clearing the trap with no penalty (if you have a successful roll) while the other requires an easier dice roll, but also carries a time penalty simply for choosing that option. The loot comes with three choices: skills (extra die and/or HP), abilities/potions (can be used for dice manipulation or healing, among other things), or XP (used to level up to increase your capacity for new skills). Often you will find yourself meeting the minimum requirements for loot but leaving multiple other spaces empty, this is an empty victory if there ever was one as you watch your hero take multiple hits and significant loss of time units. Any additional spaces are simply there to bring you pain, as leaving them uncovered will result in time and/or hit point penalties (dubbed consequences) marked on the space.
Enemies have bare minimum spaces required to unlock the post-encounter loot, these are marked with a green shield. Some spaces will allow for multiple dice to be played to hit the number, and there are black dice which can be used as any color in most cases. A space will have a color and number on it, such as a pink 5 which requires a single pink die with value 5 or greater in order to satisfy the requirement. If you choose to fight an enemy, you roll your dice and must hit certain requirements to cover the spaces on the enemy’s card. You can immediately choose to flee the encounter if it seems too difficult. Behind the door can be a monster or some kind of trap. The game is played through encounters which are revealed after opening a closed door.