Dicevaders Steam Guide: Release, Price, and Gameplay

Dicevaders has officially landed on Steam, bringing a tactical twist to the dice-building and roguelike deckbuilding genres. Developed by Canadian indie studio Pengonauts and published by Playstack, the game flips the narrative of their previous title, StarVaders. Instead of playing as the human pilots protecting humanity, players take command of the alien bosses invading the solar system planet by planet.

With an emphasis on mitigating random chance through deep dice-manipulation systems, the game has already generated strong community reception and a Very Positive review rating on Steam. Here is everything you need to know about the Steam release, pricing, platform compatibility, and core gameplay systems.

Dicevaders Steam Release, Editions, and Price

Dicevaders released on Steam on September 29, 2026. The base game retails for $14.99 / £12.99 / €14.99. To celebrate launch week, an introductory 10% discount reduces the price to $13.49 until October 13.

In addition to the standalone release, Playstack and Pengonauts offer several official Steam bundles allowing players to complete their collections with extra bundle discounts:

• Dicevaders x StarVaders Bundle: Includes both games set within the franchise's shared universe.
• Dicevaders x Balatro Bundle: Pairs Dicevaders with LocalThunk's hit poker-based roguelike.
• Dicevaders x Luck Be A Landlord Bundle: Combines two strategy drafting roguelikes centered around mechanical synergies.

Dicevaders is also rated Steam Deck Verified right out of the gate, featuring full controller support, customizable controls, cloud saves, and family sharing.

Core Gameplay Mechanics and Scoring

While players often compare the score-scaling loop to Balatro or Luck Be A Landlord, the turn-to-turn structure of Dicevaders focuses heavily on board positioning and deterministic dice manipulation.

Grid Placement and Scoring Columns

Each encounter presents a defensive quota that you must beat within four turns. Your invasion army is organized across a vertical grid corresponding to numbers one through six:

• Base Dice Rolls: At the start of your turn, you roll three base dice. The numbers rolled correspond to the active columns on your board.
• Unit Attack Contribution: Only units residing in columns rolled by the dice contribute to your attack score.
• Dice Power: When multiple dice land on the same column, each die adds extra dice power to that column, multiplying the attack generated by units stationed there.
• Multiplier (Mult): Certain artifacts, unit traits, or combos trigger global Multiplier (Mult) scaling, which multiplies your total accumulated attack at the end of scoring.
• Turn Limits and Hearts: Failing to reach the planet's defense quota within four turns costs one heart and grants an extra turn. Losing all hearts results in defeat.

Manipulating the Odds: Chrono and Budge

Rather than relying purely on random rolls, players use two primary currencies to adjust their results:

• Chrono: Spent to reroll all active dice or restock the post-turn shop. Dice and shop items can also be frozen so they remain unaffected by Chrono rerolls.
• Budge: A resource spent to adjust any rolled die by +1 or -1. Beyond basic dice tweaking, certain commander abilities and artifacts consume Budge as a direct payment cost to trigger high-impact board effects.

Shop Rarity and Pivoting

After each combat turn, players earn shop currency to purchase new units, artifacts, grid expansions, and resources. By beating quotas ahead of the four-turn limit and skipping remaining turns, players raise their Shop Rarity stat. Higher shop rarity significantly increases the likelihood of drafting rarer, higher-scaling artifacts. As a result, successful runs often require active pivoting—transitioning out of early common units into higher-tier builds as defensive requirements escalate into the hundreds of thousands.

Commanders and Roster Variety

The full Steam release includes 10 playable commanders, representing the bosses of the StarVaders universe. Each commander provides unique starting perks, specialized scaling paths, and exclusive artifacts:

• The Captain: Focuses on budge generation and pairing synergies. Pairs scored in a column grant bonus experience points (XP) to that column's artifact.
• The Core: Deploys an exclusive blue Kraken die into the base roll pool. The Kraken die awards +10 XP to artifacts in its column whenever launched and pairs with artifacts like Rib Cannon and Dread Knot.
• Whisperer: Operates around spawning and sacrificing Apple tokens. Scoring an Apple as part of a pair destroys it, generating Mini-Dice and awarding XP to all board artifacts.
• The Overseer: A master commander unlocked through progression whose starter perk, Convergence, allows players to combine the starting perks of two randomized commanders in exchange for facing faster enemy target scaling.
• Additional Commanders: The full launch roster also features Blob Girl, Hex Prince, Blood Beast, The Duchess, The Riftmaker, and The Exalted.

Beyond commanders, the launch content suite features more than 60 unit types, 120 artifacts, 30+ Constellation modifiers, 6 difficulty settings, a 13-mission Multiverse Campaign, and Daily Challenges.

System Requirements and Platform Compatibility

Dicevaders has low overall hardware demands, making it accessible on a wide variety of desktop configurations, laptops, and handheld devices.

Mac Compatibility Notice

On the Steam store page, some macOS users have noticed an automatic warning banner stating the game may not be compatible with macOS 10.15 (Catalina). Pengonauts confirmed on the Steam Community forums that this warning is an erroneous store tag configuration. The release build matches the demo architecture, and the game functions normally on supported 64-bit macOS versions.

Demo Progress Transfer to Steam

For players who spent time testing the pre-release demo, save progress and unlocked commander meta-progression carry over directly into the full release on standard PC and Mac installations. Steam achievements earned retrospectively during the demo will trigger upon launching the full game.

Community members playing on the Steam Deck have reported that if demo progress does not automatically load, switching the Steam Deck to Desktop Mode and manually copying the demo save file over to the full game directory resolves the issue.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Dicevaders support controllers on Steam?

Yes. Dicevaders features full controller support on Steam, including official support profiles for Xbox controllers, DualShock 4, and DualSense controllers, alongside full mouse-only or keyboard-only input options.

What languages are supported on Steam?

Dicevaders supports 11 languages for text and interface: English, French, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, German, Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Latin America), Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), and Russian.

How does the demo differ from the full Steam release?

The public demo allowed players to test early commanders and daily challenges. The full release expands this to 10 unique commanders, over 60 units (plus Warped unit variations), 120 artifacts, 27 Steam achievements, the full campaign, Constellation modifiers, and 13 Multiverse challenges.