ASTREA: THE SIX-SIDED ORACLES

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I might need therapy. A special one, made for addicts of a particular genre. It is not for the first time that my friends call me out of my addiction to roguelikes. I tell them I have them under control, that I can stop whenever I want… But then some fancy game with cards or better yet – dice – shows its head, waving a finger at me with a beguiling smirk and I am too much of a sucker to resist such a siren’s call. Well, gosh, we all need a vice, right? I do feel guilty about it sometimes, mostly because I want to write about variety of indie games here, and yet like seventy percent of content is about various deck builders and roguelikes. Sorry, I just can’t stop.

What I was on about…? Ah yes. My newest hit of dopamine and brain-fizzling pleasure – ASTREA: THE SIX-SIDED ORACLES. Quite a mouthful, so from now on will only call it ASTREA. And no, this isn’t a new game. Released in 2023 it somehow eluded my rather keen radar to pop into my Steam Discovery queue when I needed it most! Fantastic art style and clever mechanics drew my attention. Dice cemented my interest. And a quick dabble with the demo sold me on the game.

So, I could wax lyrical here about the features, the mechanics, even the gorgeous style of the game, but, frankly… It’s a roguelike deck builder. Well DICE builder to be precise, but when corporate asked me to spot the difference, I said – they are the same picture. And the most important question to answer when it comes to presenting a game in such a densely oversaturated genre is what does it do differently than its peers?

Trust me, it's much easier to grasp than it looks at the first glance!

Here it would be the tug of war core gameplay system.

Everything is bend to this baseline idea, including visual decisions. See, at its core it is an extremely simple concept. You are the Good Guys, represented my lovely blue on the side of Purity. And the purple-red baddies are the nasty Corruption. Goal of the game is to make sure that your blue numbers are higher than them nasty red numbers, and that’s about it. Every action in the game, be it yours or enemies, is just pulling that rope in either direction – make more blue or make more red. See? Simple, as promised.

Now that we have the basics down, the developers rolled up their sleeves and build a very dense and complex set of tools designed to manipulate those numbers. And oh boy, there are so God damn many of them! You have access to six characters, each character is – and I cannot understate it – mechanically completely different from each other with a whole family of features, statuses, unique actions, buffs and debuff. Yes, under the surface you still aim to just make more blue when reducing the red, but the journey is the fun part. The answer to the problem, the solution always being different in application.

And so, you have your straight shooter who does big damage but plays a game of edging the risks. A mage who transforms nasty dice into good ones. A fella who utilizes his minions – sentinels – in variety of explosive actions. A hovering squid with entirely unique orbs pondering feature, a moth with dodge and critical mechanics, you name it. Each offers unique playstyle, and within that playstyle, multiple directions of developing each character exists. It is heaven for those who like sniffing out synergies, combos and interlocked interactions. I couldn’t count them all, but it is safe to say that each of the titular Oracle has at least 3 to 4 different little engines hidden inside them, ways to build them to succeed. Lovely stuff.

Dice comes in variety of flavours, helping you curate your "deck" to your heart content.

But it’s not all perfect and lovely. Sure, the game is great. I say it here, so you don’t have to blast through another few thick paragraphs – ASTREA is a very good roguelike! But it has some issues. First, the tempo. Each battle feels like a slog, like it lasts forever. It isn’t… exactly true, it is the nature of the beast. You have so many dice, so many different actions, and every turn is a puzzle to solve to maximize gains or reduce harms. So, it is a strange little nitpick, because while it does feel like every combat lasts forever, every turn feels important and weighty. I was never bored, never wanted to skip ahead, and yet the length of each encounter felt off, somehow.

The challenge level is rather lukewarm, to put it gently. I do have hefty experience in the genre, but I am not exactly a fan of roguelikes in which I win every run, one after another, with contemptuous ease. Here even the true final boss didn’t put up its dukes to test my mettle. Was just a fat hit points sponge to whittle down. Once your game plan is online and dice selection rolls your strategy into action, you’re kind of unstoppable. The enemies do too little to threaten you, and with a vast toolbox at your disposal it often felt like I would have to play badly to have a hard time.

But! And it’s a real big but… It feels like it is made so by design. Simply because the game has progressive difficulty options, and at some point, the corrupted critters actually start showing their teeth. If you want to grind the higher difficulties, you will, at last, start feeling some tension. Question is, would players want to spend so much time cooking to reach that level, if the game never tests their mettle before that? Perhaps. I am not so sure.

But then the meta progression feels pretty decent! Every time you level one of the Oracles you unlock new stuff. Not a lot, but just enough to feel good about the event. New blessings, new actions for the dice sets, just a bit extra for your next runs. That’s pretty nifty, and make the grind a little less painful, because you might encounter new things on the way – a crucial aspect of any decent roguelike to have.

Run upgrading shops are a bit of meh, but hey, more options is more options.

Another bit that was a bit meh was run upgrading system. Sentinels are great, and once you find a couple that fits your plan, you’re likely just going to keep upgrading them until they reach their limit. Forging new stuff onto your dice felt extremely lacklustre. It’s expensive, it’s rare, and if you have 20-25 dice in your box it means you have 120 to 150 dice sides! And paying most of your star shard to upgrade ONE of them to a new action feels lacking in impact. Yeah, some of those actions are very strong, and yes, modifying a powerful dice to be even juicer IS nice, but the feeling persists. At least the blessings always feels chunky in the power spike they offer, so that’s nice.

I mentioned before that the whole core tug of war system informs every aspect of the game, and the visual side of it is no different. Entire game is cast in cold blues and sharp reds with a lovely purple as a bridge between them. It’s not exactly monochrome, but getting pretty close to it. Art style is superb, with that cold and hot contrast working well to keep you informed on what’s what. Intuitive, too! If you see red, that’s no bueno. If you see blue or white or gold, that’s all Gucci gang. And UI clarity is crucial here, since the game is very dense with information to give. Fortunately, I have zero complaint about it – it was all crystal clear, sharply designed and well executed. Love the character, love the interface and enjoy the fantasy adventure tunes accompanying us on the journey!

I should probably mention that there’s a story here but I’ll be frank. I didn’t read it. I get the gist of it. Planet got corrupted by the evil Cosmic Mojo, we are the six oracles who wield magical powers to purify the corruption and out goal is to go the planet uh… spiritual core and give it a healthy spanking of tranquil power blasts to wash the nasty red away and make it lovingly, sparklingly blue. Yay! There were dialogues telling me more but some of them lasted so long that my eyes blurred over and pressed fast to get them out of the way. It’s a roguelike dice builder, damn it, I want to roll my cubes and do math!

Overall, ASTREA: THE SIX-SIDED ORACLES is a blast to play. It has its tedium, which I ascribe to the hefty baggage it carries with the enormous amount of features it has implemented around its solid, shiny core. But if you get under the hood, start figuring out what’s what and crank up the difficulty as soon as you can, you’ll find a robust game with countless ways to beat it, littered liberally with a variety of mechanics to entertain you for days upon days. If you’re a dice gremlin and love them roguelike deck builders, this can be a very potent pearl in your collection.