Dee-6: Dice Defenders Reviews

It looks strategic and the shop tags say so, too, but it's not. It should have the Auto-battler tag even although it requires your input to proceed, but your options to influence the game are extremely limited depending on the dice rolls. Most options are more like illusions then choices. Basically, you randomly determine by rolling what you can do in the current turn and the "game" plays itself - hence why it should have the Auto-battler tag. You don't choose to shoot/repair/charge shields etc., that only happens, if the right die side comes up (commanders are the only exception). [list] [*]You can choose whether to use yellow dice to charge shields or stun an enemy, but depending on what enemies are present, there's no real choice, unless you're an idi[b][/b]ot. [*]You can choose which enemy to shoot with green dice, but again, depending on what enemies are present, there's no real choice, unless you're an idi[b][/b]ot. [*]You can choose which disabled dice to return into your pool with red dice, but depending on how many dice are in the sick bay, there is, [b]again[/b], no real choice, unless you're an idi[b][/b]ot... [/list] [h3]Conclusion: This "game" is [u]NOT strategic, challenging, nor fun[/u]... unless you're an idi[b][/b]ot.[/h3] With 4€ it's not expensive per se, but even that's too much for a boring railroad experience.

The concept is interesting (FTL with dice) but the gameplay is (in my opinion) tedious and slow.

Too much randomness! The game plays itself most of the time and your input is reduced to shuffling dice into predetermined positions. In case of many turns, you will just have no real options, no decisions to make - you are not a player, you are a clerk. Furthermore, the line between 'soldiering on' and 'failure guaranteed' is so damn fragile. Hardly any wiggle room. Again, if luck decides it is game over time, you will just get into insurmountable odds within a turn or two and that's it.

I didn't enjoy it. Even as a dice game, it feels like it's too random and too much is taken out of your hands. Each dice face performs 1-2 unique functions, but most of them are situational. So if you just keep not getting the dice you need, you just lose. Beyond that however, because you can't modify the dice, and each one only has action, you just end up taking the action the dice gives you. It might get better with some of the other ships, but I am approaching 4 hours and do not have any other ships unlocked.

Love the idea but horrible pacing completely ruins the fun. Most of the turns nothing interesting happens, and turns where literally nothing happens are not uncommon as well.

Extremely addicting & original single player tabletop game. Dice are the crew members you distribute to functions every turn, trying to fend off space pirates, epidemic viruses & all kinds of trouble.

If you're a fan of Deep Space D-6, Star Trek: The Dice Game or Astroforce, you're going to enjoy this game. It plays very similarly to Deep Space D-6, with you rolling the dice, assigning them to stations and pretty much turning lemons into lemonade each turn. There's a lot of RNG. I mean, dice are the core mechanic of the game. What do you expect? So, going into it, you should already be aware that this game is about mitigation. And it is. There's plenty of ways to deal with threats and there are choices to be made each turn. Especially when you have to choose between using a command to turn a crew die into an engineer (to restore the shields or disable an attacker) or a marine (to do some damage). Or do you use the command to re-roll all the other dice (and risk getting another threat)? You will lose the first few games. That's almost guaranteed. After you get the hang of it and develop an idea of which threats are the most important to deal with, you'll start winning.

This truly is a game of tempo. The game is all about trying to stay ahead in tempo above the enemy deck, and if you ever fall behind on tempo, boy does this game punish you for it. Thus, this is a recommendation with caveats. First, I think the campaign is where the game truly shines as it has smaller decks with specific themed enemies that give a cool different experience each time you play. It also has a feature I wish was available in standard battles- the store. In the game sometimes the dice will plunge your tempo so far into the depths that it's impossible to recover, and the store can give massive spikes of tempo back to you. Thus if you get the game, after your first standard battle and loss (if you somehow win your first standard battle I am in awe) I would say stick to the campaign for the most part. Second, you really have to temper your expectations of winning. This is not a game where once you know the game you should be winning every battle- luck is a huge factor. I don't think this is a bad thing, plenty of games, especially board games, have luck as a massive component. It is something you need to expect though, you can make all the right decisions and sometimes the game just wants you to lose. Winning a standard battle or campaign without the store is an achievement. For $5, I don't see a reason not to try it and see if it's something you enjoy. Just don't expect it to be like Hades or Binding of Isaac or Slay the Spire where even with the luck, once you know what you are doing you can win nearly every game. Edit: With the new update making sensor dice automatically count towards your compensation bonus, tempo is much easier to maintain and loss of it is easier to recover from. I'm very impressed with this change and if support keeps being added to the game to help fix the swingy tempo issues, then even my caveats may vanish!

Very good rendition of Deep Space D6, with a nice suit of additions (ships, threats, game modes, achievements, progression). I prefer the presentation in Deep Space D6 (or is it because I have played it so much?), but Dee-6's presentation is still functional & clear enough. I have to say the game is an acquired taste, but I certainly disagree with the lack of dice roll mitigation statement. The game gives you many different ways to mitigate bad rolls. That being said, the game can be a bit swingy at times, but that's part of the appeal to me. So, if you like Deep Space D6, it's a no-brainer. If not, it's a nice dice chucker with a lot of variety & a lot more depths than it looks.

I normally dont review games this quickly, with only 3 hours of game time, but at this point I already know more than enough about this one to do it, and I want to give it some more attention if possible. Dee-6 is actually a game I'm already very familiar with... mostly. It is basically an unofficial port of a board game called Deep Space D-6, which is a personal favorite of mine among my collection and one I've played many times. Well, I say "port", but that's just the start of it. It absolutely LOOKS the same, complete with the minimalistic enemy cards and dice symbols, but past that, this isnt just a port... this is a massive upgrade. This contains way, WAY more content, a big pile of added mechanics, new modes, and so on. I want to state right away that no, this is NOT like FTL. The only similarity is that you assign crew to tasks... that's it. It plays nothing like it otherwise, so just keep that in mind. I know it's the first comparison many will think of when seeing this. No, the gameplay here is very different. The basics are simple enough to understand. Your goal is to make it all the way through the Threat Deck, full of, well, threat cards. Threats can be either external (ships, asteroids, nebula, whatever), or internal (boarding crews, berserk robots, sickness, whatever). External threats go onto the right side, in one of the four slots. The slots are basically a way to track how much health each threat has... as they take damage they move down. For internal threats, you cannot damage them with your weapons, and so must assign the required crew to them to get rid of them. You best do these things quick, because a new threat comes at the end of every single turn. Also, the Threat Die is rolled. Each threat will show a range of dice values that will cause it to activate, as well as text/symbols that tell you exactly what that threat does when it activates. The game does a great job of making it easy to keep track of all these things, which is good, as sometimes you will have many of them at once. In order to deal with these threats, you have your crew, represented by dice. 5 of the sides of each die represent the 5 types of crew members. The 6th one, this purple eye thing, sends that die up into the sensor... get 3 in there at once and you draw yet another threat immediately. What of the normal 5 though? Well, this is where your ship comes into play. Each given ship has a variety of compartments, which each can accept specific crew types to do different things. The starting ship for instance has a weapons room, which can accept combat crew... one damage for one die, but if you have more than one at once before firing, each additional one adds 2 to that value (and damage can be split among targets). There is also a room that uses the orange crew to either refill your shields, or use a stasis beam on an enemy ship. And the commander room, which can either roll all remaining dice again, or change one die to any specific face. Among other rooms that are also there. Every ship will have different things they can do, and every ship is good at some types of things, and less good at others. While the game may appear to be entirely luck based at first, that is not the case (even in the board game). Assigning dice isnt always as clear-cut as you might think, and the decisions of exactly how to go about it are important... it doesnt exactly take many wrong decisions to end up all exploded and stuff. While those mechanics are great and all, Dee-6 takes it many steps further, building upon and enhancing the already existing mechanics. For instance, dice that you dont assign on a given round will count towards the RNG Compensator, which offers a whole bunch of different actions it can do when fully charged. You can also unlock different pilots, which give bonuses when used. And some other stuff beyond that. The game also does a good job of easing you into everything. The board game is pretty brutal right from the start, but this starts off nice and slow, with some difficulty lowering options active when your rank (which you increase by winning runs) is low. And the tutorial does an excellent job of explaining everything you need to know as you go along. There's a whole lot of content here too. The board game had a few different ships, and the threat deck, and that was about it. This has many ships, many pilots, LOTS of threat cards, a variety of different modes, and piles of special actions that can be done with the Compensator and other means. Some things (like the starter ship) are right out of the board game... many others are unique to this one. Seriously there is SO MUCH to do here. Dee-6 is sort of a love letter to a cult classic board game that is super fun in its own right, being far more than just a mere digital port. As someone who has played the board game absolutely to death, this is one I'll be coming back to for a long time to come. Quite impressed with this one, indeed, and highly recommended to fans of board games and dice games in particular. Seriously, it's excellent stuff.