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 full game is Steam Deck Verified (confirmed 2026-10-02).

$14.99 on Steam (the 10% launch-window discount to $13.49 ended; the Chinese region price is ¥54, lowered from the launch-week ¥88 — both confirmed via the Steam API, price check 2026-11-02). Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 pricing follows the same standard. There are no microtransactions — the game is a single premium purchase, with 27 Steam achievements at launch.

Ten commanders at launch, each with a distinct starter perk and its own perks and artifacts found during a run. All ten have official kit breakdowns from the pre-launch dev-log series: The Captain, Blob Girl, The Core, The Duchess, The Riftmaker, Whisperer, The Exalted, Hex Prince, Blood Beast and the unlockable Overseer. Five more commanders arrive across the three free content updates announced on 2026-10-29, bringing the roster to 15 by the 2.0 update.

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.

Tippy is the final boss of Chapter 6 in Dicevaders, famous for sweeping board attacks and Dead Space hazard interference. Defeating Tippy requires a focused scaling engine (such as Blob Girl Mini Dice swarm or The Riftmaker burst), using Budges to maneuver dice around corrupted spaces, and executing triples or quads to puncture shields before the orbital wipe. In Sandbox mode (introduced in Patch #3), players can also substitute Tippy with Garu for alternate encounter patterns.

Charge is a special dice state that accumulates energy across turns instead of expiring. When a Charged die participates in an aligned combo (pairs, triples, or quadruples), it unleashes amplified Dicepower or triggers bonus unit activations in its placement column. Combining Charged dice with force-multiplying artifacts like Wings of Fury or Slusho Max produces tremendous burst rounds needed against high-tier boss encounters.

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.

Yes — Dicevaders is Steam Deck Verified. The developers confirmed full verification in their official 2026-10-02 Patch #1 announcement, on top of the earlier patch-note work: bigger tooltips for Deck readability, audio layering moves and controller fixes. The demo already listed full controller support before launch.