The Beautiful And Brutal Dice Of The Fortress

I named my knight Lickity Split, a prisoner of a villainous Sorceror King in the new dungeon RPG, The Fortress. It was a pun I came up with on “Lich,” and it was I who led him to his death a mere six rooms away from his starting cell.

My second attempt as a wizard lasted just five minutes. The game is a dungeon crawler with a murderous fixation on dice rolls. The opening of the Steam demo establishes this immediately. Each fight involves rolling dice of three different colors and spending their pips to attack enemies who have health points of a corresponding color. If the dice you roll do not match the enemy’s health color, you cannot attack, forcing you to end your turn and take damage from your foes. It is a system that demands both strategy and a great deal of luck. My own character, Lickity Split, appeared to have terrible luck.

There is a small mercy in the combat design. Any dice you don’t use to attack will fill a gauge for a powerful area-of-effect attack when you end your turn. This special move damages all enemies on screen without any need to match colors. The trade-off is that you might not survive long enough to fill the gauge completely. I found this out the hard way. I thought my knight was making good progress through the pixelated shadows of the prison, but a ghost dog ended his journey abruptly.

My subsequent run as a wizard ended in the exact same room, defeated by the very same enemy. The game establishes its difficulty early and without apology, making every encounter a tense calculation of risk and resource management. The art style is lush and painterly, a sharp contrast to the brutal, unforgiving nature of the gameplay. The enemies are detailed and animated, heaving and gaping as they prepare to strike.

The Fortress offers nine character classes, each specializing in a different dice color or a combination of them, which suggests a good deal of replayability. Character customization extends to three equipment slots that can modify your chances of survival. I found a rusty shield that could cancel one incoming attack before it shattered, and an enchanted scroll that added a single, crucial pip to my blue magic die. These small advantages feel monumental when a single point of damage can be the difference between victory and defeat. The citadel is also populated by figures who are not immediately hostile.

I encountered hints of vampire merchants, fallen abbots, and other sinister characters, each with their own secrets and ulterior motives, adding a layer of narrative mystery to the dungeon crawl. These interactions suggest a world with more depth than a simple series of combat rooms.

Somewhere above, the Sorceror King waits. After dying twice in room six, I have no desire to find out how many dice it takes to defeat him. The game feels simpler and more direct than complex grid-based crawlers, presenting a steady, linear onslaught of fights broken up by the occasional treasure room. The focus remains squarely on the roll of the dice. The full game is set to launch on Steam tomorrow.