Dice a Million is Balatro with dice

The dice are loaded, and that's the point

I love games where you make increasingly bigger numbers. Games like Balatro, Luck Be a Landlord, and Nubby’s Number Factory have consumed immense amounts of my time. While many people this month have been eagerly awaiting the release of Resident Evil Requiem, the big February game I’ve been counting down to is the full version of roguelite deckbuilder Dice a Million. After having sunk about a dozen hours into the demo last year, I knew the complete game would enrapture me entirely, and I can now confirm I was correct.

It feels reductive to call Dice a Million “Balatro with dice,” but it does share a lot of the qualities that make the card game so hard to put down, and it’s affected my mental state in the same way, too. Just as my brain began relating everything to playing cards at the height of my Balatro love affair, so too am I now constantly consumed with thoughts of dice. Dice a Million is another solo dev endeavor as well, spearheaded by a creator that goes by countlessnights.

The concept of Dice a Million is very straightforward: build up a bag of dice that, over the course of the run, will eventually be able to rack up a million points. Like most games in the genre, point requirements are slowly ramped up each round, with shop visits in-between and the occasional boss, which the game calls Faces. There are various hands you can begin with that are unlocked over time, which determine your starting “deck” of dice.

The dice in Dice a Million aren’t just regular dice, though — there’s more than 120 different types at varying levels of weirdness and complexity. Some are simple, like a magnetic die that pulls others towards it, or one that only rolls even numbers. Others are more layered, offering gimmicks like multiplier buffs or proximity effects. Others are just plain ridiculous, like the Die of Dice, a sort of meta-die which will roll the die shown on its face.

Some aren’t even dice at all — I’ve embarked on runs where, by the end, my bag was full of mostly marbles or bottle caps instead of dice. You’ll find yourself tossing piñatas and piggybanks and matryoshka dolls onto your board, and that’s only the beginning of the fun.

You can also enchant your dice, giving them the power to do things like activate twice or not take up space in your hand, or increase the value of a die face through upgrades. There are also consumables in the form of cards, which are one-time use and allow you to reroll reward options or draw extra dice. Rings — there are more than 80 in Dice a Million — are Joker-esque constant modifiers worn by the dice-tossing hand,

Dice a Million brilliantly balances its ridiculousness with genuine complexity. Honestly, I have still never gotten to the very end of a run, and I find myself learning about new dice and synergies. Like many entries in the “make a big number” genre, it’s also a game designed to be broken, though I’m not nearly good enough to do so just yet.

Sometimes, I’ll roll the dice and a chain reaction will occur that I barely understand, if at all, and it’s absolutely awesome. Because of the inherent randomness of dice, the gameplay of Dice a Million hits a bit different. You can only control so much, and you’ll find yourself shouting at the screen just like you would a slot machine during a Cloverpit run or the real-life dice at a craps table. The rest is in the hands of the RNG gods.

---

Dice a Million is available now for Microsoft PC via Steam and itchio, and via Xbox PC Game Pass for PC only.