Dicevaders FAQ

Dicevaders launches on Steam, Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 on September 29. The date is confirmed by the developer's official release-date announcement and Steam news posts. Wishlist it on Steam to get the launch notification.

Yes — a free Steam demo has been live since February 18, 2026, featuring The Captain, Blob Girl, The Core and The Duchess across the first three difficulties plus a Daily Challenge mode. The developers have confirmed your demo progress transfers to the full game, so it is worth playing before launch.

Dicevaders is a dice-based roguelike deckbuilder about leading the ultimate alien invasion. It is set in the StarVaders universe with the roles reversed: you command the alien bosses and invade Earth, while the legendary Pilots from StarVaders show up to stop you.

Dicevaders is developed by Pengonauts, the studio behind StarVaders, and published by Playstack. The developers ran a public playtest that logged over 25,000 hours of play before the demo era.

PC via Steam (Windows and Mac), plus Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 — all confirmed for the September 29 launch. The demo lists full controller support, and the developers have called out Steam Deck readability improvements in their patch notes.

The price has not been announced yet — the Steam page does not list pricing before release. There are no microtransactions mentioned anywhere in the official material; the game is expected to follow the standard premium single-purchase model like StarVaders.

Ten commanders at launch, each with a distinct starter perk and its own perks and artifacts found during a run. Eight are revealed with official kit breakdowns: The Captain, Blob Girl, The Core, The Duchess, The Riftmaker, Whisperer, The Exalted and the unlockable Overseer.

The Overseer is the unlockable hybrid commander revealed in the developers' full-game teaser: it lets you mix and match two different commanders' abilities as well as access their unique artifacts, enabling game-breaking combinations. The unlock condition has not been detailed yet.

They are the two dice-control resources. Chrono strategically rerolls your dice and restocks the shop so you can draft your most vital units; Budges manipulate your dice throw to build the exact combo you want. Spending order for most builds: Budges first for fine adjustment, Chrono when the whole roll is wrong.

You align your dice in pairs, triples or quadruples to ignite devastating combos — the official description stresses that tactics, not luck, determine outcomes. Artifacts and perks then feed on those alignments: Wings of Fury pays for pairs, Dark Tower fires on triples, Dread Knot pays +150 STR on any quadruple.

Yes — as the opposition. The official description warns that "the legendary Pilots from StarVaders will show up to protect the planet, each armed with unique abilities designed to disrupt your invasion." Detailed Pilot rosters and abilities have not been published yet.

The developers themselves compare it to Luck be a Landlord, Nubby's Number Factory and Ballionaire — score-chasing roguelikes where a board compounds value — while stressing a much stronger focus on strategy. Dicevaders adds the grid-placement layer and active dice manipulation those games do not have.

The demo ships in eleven languages: English, French, German, Spanish (Spain and Latin America), Japanese, Korean, Portuguese-Brazil, Russian, and Simplified and Traditional Chinese. The full game is expected to carry this localization forward.

The demo lists full controller support and the developers' patch notes specifically call out increasing tooltip sizes for better Steam Deck playability, moving audio layers and fixing controller issues — clear signs of active Deck support. An official verification badge has not been announced yet.