If you’ve not heard of Balatro, or one of the many ‘chaos engine’-type games that it’s inspired, then you’ve possibly been living under a rock, or you’ve possibly returned from some sort of deep space mission. Or, perhaps, you’ve simply been dead, as you are in Dice of Kalma.
Dice of Kalma starts out with you dead and facing a pixelated twist on Death. This iteration of Mr Reaper is short on patience as you’ve been rather vigilantly attempting to escape and offers you a chance at freedom if you don’t mind gambling on a slots-dice twist. Also, he has a big sword.
Considering that he’s meant to have lost his patience, he’s got an incredible amount of time (based on my current playtime) free to utter comments on how you’re doing, and let you know which poker-style scoring combination you’ve achieved with your dice. Presumably, your ‘escapes’ were some sort of ridiculous, Looney Tunes or Marx Brothers style antics, and Death is a kind of numbers… I mean, dice-guy.
As I inferred earlier, if you’re a friend of Balatro’s Jimmy, then you’ll get along just grand with Death and his skulls. Dice of Kalma features the same ‘Poker Hand’ system. However, rather than having the thirteen card faces and four suits to choose from, you’ve simply got a fistful (that’s five today, kids) of dice.
That does, as you might expect, mean that there are substantially fewer options for chaos and ‘deck construction’. Still, it does mean that rounds are balanced to be shorter, and the ‘skull’ and hand upgrades that you get between each goal are incredibly important. Do you take the skull that gives you two extra rerolls if you roll (just) a High Dice or straight? Do you instead go for the one that gives the reroll if you happen to get all your dice arranged symmetrically? The latter happens more than you might expect, and familiarity from repeated plays means that your strategy will repeat over time.
Dice of Kalma is an easy recommendation from me. Its visual style is easy to read, the fact that straights don’t roll over (4-5-6-1-2) and that it can do the math for you if you hold your finger on the Play Hand button, make this feel really great on mobile. It also works offline — a rarity.