Dungeon Scramble

A roguelike dungeon crawler where you roll a 4x4 tray of dice and trace one path through it to attack, block and heal.

Short description

Dungeon Scramble is a roguelike dungeon crawler where you roll a 4x4 tray of dice and trace one path through it to attack, block and heal. Monsters telegraph their next move, so each turn is a puzzle you can solve rather than a coin flip. It was designed by Jeremy Friedman, a mechanical engineer turned math-teacher-in-training, and his wife, Katlynn Friedman, first as a board game, and it is coming to iPhone and Android with Floor 1 free and no ads.

Long description

Dungeon Scramble is a turn-based roguelike where every turn is a small puzzle. Roll sixteen dice into a 4x4 tray, then trace a single path through them: each die you step on fires its face, from Hit and Block to Combo, Boost and Freeze. Monsters always show their next move, so every turn is a fair fight you can plan for. Pick from four origins and four classes, collect 56 loot dice and 27 relics, and descend through three floors to the Big Bosses.

Maneuver faces like Leap, Dodge and Pivot bend the rules of the path. Chain them in the right order and a modest roll becomes a monster-flattening turn. Block the big hit, freeze the wind-up, or burst it down before it lands.

Fact sheet

Features

• One path per turn. Your dice land in a 4x4 tray and you trace one path through neighboring dice. Each die you step on fires its face: Hit, Block, Heal, Combo, Boost, Freeze and more.
• Maneuvers bend the path. Leap, Dodge and Pivot change where you can step next.
• Fair fights. You always see what each monster plans to do next turn.
• 4 origins and 4 classes (Dwarf, Gnome, Halfling, Pixie; Armsmaster, Guard, Dungeoneer, Arcanist), each class with its own zone of the tray and a once-per-turn trick.
• 3 floors with 37 monsters, 12 traps and 9 bosses, including 3 Big Bosses with a second phase.
• 56 loot dice to find, equip and unlock as starting boons.
• 27 relics and 32 shrines, from fair trades to shady bargains.
• Camps where you choose: rest, or train your dice.
• Depth: 10 stackable modifiers for when the base dungeon stops being scary, plus class badges and dice finishes.
• Floor 1 free, one purchase for the rest. No ads, no energy timers, no account. Plays offline.

The story

Dungeon Scramble began as a tabletop game designed by Jeremy Friedman and his wife, Katlynn Friedman. Jeremy has a master's in engineering and worked as a mechanical engineer before switching careers toward teaching math. Together they built the game and its mechanics: a word-game-style grid of dice where, instead of spelling words, you trace a path from die to die and every face you land on is an attack, a block or a trick. Add monsters, loot and a dungeon to kick your way through, and the board game was born.

Then Jeremy started building a digital version to test it, and it kept growing. The computer could handle the bigger numbers, stacking effects and bosses with whole move lists that would bog down a game played by hand. Somewhere along the way he decided, in his words:

"This is a video game now."

The board game edition was set aside, and the video game took over. The engineer and the math lover both still show: the monsters and items have names like the Anti-Euclidian Space, the N-th Dimensional Printer and the Gnomeowners Association.

Screenshots

Portrait phone captures, 1185x2307 PNG. Click for full size.

Store-size images (1290x2796)

Video

Contact and links

Dungeon Scramble press kit. Screenshots and clips are from the game as of build 1.41.77. Screenshots, clips and text are free to use in coverage of the game.