#Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles

[filipmagnuswrites]

Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles Game Review - The Best Dice Deckbuilder Roguelike Yet

Give a man a card game and he’ll log thirty hours into it without a second thought. Give a man a dice game, and watch him go progressively wonkier as he is forced to remember six different types of dice mechanics, one for each of the six characters you can unlock while playing Astrea: Six-Sided Oracle. That man is me. You know, in case it wasn’t obvious. I’ve put eleven hours into Astrea and…

[fancypantsrecords]

Various Artists - Sounds Of Summer 2022 | Black Screen Records | 2022 | Black

[savingcontent]

Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles coming September 26th to consoles alongside new daily run mode

Continue reading Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles coming September 26th to consoles alongside new daily run mode

[casuallyyoa]

ASTREA: SIX-SIDED ORACLE IMPRESSIONS

WHAT

Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles is a new roguelike from Little Leo Games, launched 21st September 2023 (22nd, for those of me in a different timezone). I’ve tried out the demo before, calling it something I’d prioritize among the many, many other games out there. Well, now that it’s out, it’s time for the Casual Impressions.

SETTINGS

The options menu is fairly spartan, but the game doesn’t have that much you really need to tweak anyway.

You have your audio sliders, barebones graphics presets, the ability to change battle speed up to ultra fast, skipping certain animations, a run timer toggle, controls between mouse and controller / keyboard, and miscellaneous options for screenshake, particle effects and data collection. 

Data collection is to send the devs gameplay data and error logs to assist in game balance and does not include personal identifying information. If you’re still concerned, you can turn it off regardless.

Text languages available are:

English

Brazilian Portuguese 

Simple / Traditional Chinese

French

German

Japanese

Korean

Russian

Spanish

While the Ultra battle speed sounds handy for maybe speedrunning and such, it doesn’t seem to affect the actual dice roll animations which while nice, is probably something you might want to skip when it comes to rushing through. 

Since I use the mouse, right-click is for viewing a die’s face. Maybe there could be a toggle for quick use when it comes to area of effect dice.

PRESENTATION

Astrea is mostly in this gorgeous blue, purple and gold trim colour palette. It quite reminds me of tarot, as you lay out the cloth and prepare your cards for a reading. The dice aside, the blessings you can get look like metal pins you could buy off Etsy - and could totally make for some kickass limited edition merchandise, if you get my drift.

The Oracles and the purifying they do are blue, while the corruption is in red. The corruption can morph pretty much anything into terrifying, dangerous entities; if they are sentient beings, they scurry off to the right side of the screen once you help them regain their senses.

I do wonder how much being colourblind can affect someone when it comes to playing this game. We can take visual clarity for granted sometimes.

GAMEPLAY

Gameplay wise, Astrea has not changed drastically from the demo. You have your dice with all their faces of effects that make up your deck. ‘Safe’ dice usually don’t have the biggest numbers, but you’re at least assured you wouldn’t roll something that could be devastating, unlike ‘Risky’ dice which generally have bombastic effects, both good and bad. Mostly bad?

With your dice in hand, you proceed from node to node, picking up more dice options, finding encounters, and what have you. You can have up to two Sentinels, your support buddies offering more dice to complement your chosen character’s playstyle. Their HP is pretty low and don’t all get the ability to attack, so they’re not the most reliable helpers if they don’t have the spread of dice you want.

You will need to balance between Purifying and Corruption, more so if you’re picking out risky dice. You can inflict Corruption on yourself to activate your spread of Virtues - the row of icons above your health bar - but too much, and you’d accidentally lose one of your lives. 

You can’t throw all the Corruption onto the enemies either; it will heal them and trigger Overcorruption abilities once they reach the threshold to immediately perform an action you probably would rather avoid. That’s not forgetting any potential passive effects they have. The least you can do is hover over the smaller icons and read up on what they do.

Once you’ve cleared a single run with a given Oracle, you can start ramping up the difficulty via Anomaly levels a la something like Slay the Spire’s Ascension. You will want to try out all the characters to level them up to unlock even more things for later runs, as you might expect.

One thing I found a little odd was that there wasn’t an Abandon Run option right now. As it happens, forfeiting a run means you don’t get any experience towards levelling up that character. So even if you’re in a run you feel is hopeless, you need to keep on going anyway otherwise you make no progress. I would have thought games like these usually give a nominal amount towards unlocks, but different games, different systems.

CONCLUSION

Well, is it much of a surprise I really like this game following from the demo? It’s pretty simple to grasp, though of course it won’t prevent me from yelling at unfavourable rerolls. I wanted to work on a 'review' once I managed to complete a run with a character which happened a little sooner than I thought, so there’s certainly more to be had. As it is, I already liked it, so Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles is a Highly Recommended.  

[vidityavoleti]

i can't tell if i'm being mean but this description of dice is destroying me lmao

[giallogigan]

some more astrea sketches, mostly playing with their colors

[averyplane]

I suffer playing this character :)

[transdragonlira]

I don't often say that you need to play any specific game, everyone has their own preferences and I get that. That being said. You NEED to check out Astrea: Six sided oracles.

FIRST OF ALL, JUST LOOK AT THIS SNIPPET FROM THE STEAM BANNER

The game is GORGEOUS, and I don't mean in a "this game has good graphics" NO I MEAN AS IN THE ARTSTYLE IS JUST STRAIGHT UP BEAUTIFUL. It's a visual experience like I have never seen before.

But what's even better than the artstyle, is the gameplay. Good lord the gameplay is fantastic. Everything feels like it works together perfectly. And when I say everything, I mean everything. From the dice, the artsyle, the story, your virtues, your health, the enemies' health, your blessings, your sentinels- everything feels in sync with eachother. The sheer amount of synergies you can discover feel endless. (I'm personally a huge fan of the virtue system- making a 'bad' or an 'unlucky' roll still have a significant purpose in your game plan is some genius game design)

Every turn matters. Every turn is a matter of life and death, a good turn is good, but a bad turn can be outright DISASTEROUS. This game WILL have you sitting on the egde of your seat constantly. Every turn is a puzzle to be solved, and every run is a combination of carefully (or not so carefully) picked out dice, with many paths to victory.

Like so many masterpieces of games, the game is easy to learn, but has so much dept to explore that I don't think I'll ever truly master it.

Look. I put 5 hours in the free demo which only includes the first area and only a handful of dice, virtues and characters. This game is gonna get hundreds of hours put into by me. There's a lot to say about the game, but frankly- none of it is enough to encapsulate the full experience. If you're not sold immediatly, you can try the demo first, it has plently of content to get you hooked

NOW GO PLAY IT, IT'S 10% OFF FOR THE LAUNCH! YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT

[so-and-sos-blog]

I’ve been playing a lot of roguelike deckbuilders. They’re really fun, but the problem I always have with engine-builders is that I want to have the engine. They’re engine-builders, not engine-havers. The engine gets thrown out once the run is over, win or lose. And I don’t just mean “I want the games to be longer so I can play with my engine more before throwing it out”, like an endless mode. I mean I want to put that engine in my garage so I can take it for a spin every now and then whenever I feel like it. I want a whole parking lot full of shiny game-winning engines, and I want to keep getting new ones and keep playing with the vintage ones.

I want the variety and replayability of a roguelike engine-builder, but not the impermanence of “hooray, you won, now just throw out that cool engine you built and we’ll pretend that never happened”.

[burnazog]

the funny dice game cometh very funny that the first character is blue mana shenanigans

[syvisvt]

It is time!

#AstreaDiceGame Calls!

Join in as we explore the full release of this dice builder I have been itching to play!

My bio shall lead you!

[birdsinvideogames]

Game: Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles

Bird: Moonie the Owl

Hello and welcome! The first bird to be rated here is Moonie, and she's a cutie! With a sweet little face and a trans flag color palette, how could you not love her?!

Rating: 10/10

[blueberry-lemon]

Love this game so far. Just got my first win.

I love Slay the Spire and it taught me everything I needed to learn about deckbuilders, but I think this game, Monster Train, and Touhou Lost Branch of Legend have surpassed it as my favorites.

[hardcoregamer]

The Top Ten Games of PAX East 2023

PAX East 2023 ended a couple of days ago, and while it suffered a bit to the still-lingering specter of COVID and the unfortunate timing of being held at the same time as GDC, this year’s event felt like a grand return to form. While there are still  notable absences that were felt (still hoping for that Indie Megabooth comeback), there was an incredible amount of amazing games to be seen, and so like with PAX West 2022 last year, we wanted to celebrate by once again picking our ten favorite games from the show.

Check them out!

[solrin]

Astrea VOD #3

Hot damn do I love me some RNG based characters

[failbettergames]

any games you'd recommend? could be for any reason! (similarity to fallen london, you know the people who made it, you just think it's neat, etc.) besides your own, of course, I already own all of those :)

Yes, here's a list of all of the games we talked about in our newsletter last year:

Birth: an adventure puzzle game about constructing a creature from spare bones & organs.

Scarlet Hollow: an immersive, episodic horror-mystery.

Egypt: Old Kingdom: a strategy simulator of the Great Pyramids period.

The Past Within is a fun, eerie way to spend an hour with a friend.

The Pale Beyond: high stakes on the frozen wastes, Sunless Sea feelings. 

King of the Castle: medieval monarch party game.

Stray Gods: an urban fantasy, musical visual novel featuring the gods of Greek myth.

Vampire Survivors: so moreish.

Knotwords: extremely satisfying crossword-anagram-puzzle game.

The Banished Vault: so gorgeous it actually makes us a bit cross.

Astronaut the Best: an anarchic comedy about assembling a team of hapless astronauts. 

El Paso, Elsewhere: supernatural neo-noir shooter, in which you must destroy the villain you loved - even if it means dying yourself.

Thank Goodness You're Here: may be the only game that’s more British than the ones we make.

The Fabulous Fear Machine: pulpy horror narrative strategy.

WORLD OF HORROR: Junji Ito-adjacent roguelike.

Lies of P: tickles your Fromsoft fancy. 

The Lamplighters League: essentially 1930s supernatural XCOM 

Tails Noir (formerly known as Backbone): gorgeous, bleak, compelling and unsatisfying in equal measure. 

Mediterrea Inferno: a spicy story about finding yourself after isolation.

DotAGE: manage a village where the Village Elder has helpfully precise visions of the future.

Slay the Princess: the princess is very bad and you have to kill her. 

VR remake of The 7th Guest: very fun, silly and far less punishing than the original. 

Astrea: Six-sided Oracles: interesting dice-and-deckbuilding system. 

Return of the Obra Dinn: truly a modern classic.