UPDATE: This doesn’t change my score, but one other nit I have for the devs is that I wish there was a way to pay to remove ads that did not include speeding up the game. At the moment, you can’t buy “remove ads” in the store without also getting a perk that increases the experience you receive. I’d rather not progress faster since it’s a fun game, so I’d love to see that option. As my previous review below says, the ada aren’t bad though so I live without.I don’t usually write reviews, but wanted to let the dev know this is a great game. Title says it all. You don’t often find a game that isn’t ruined by ads, but this one has a fine balance. They’re there, but aren’t built into a grind like many other games. Game itself is pretty addictive. After a few hours of playing, I can say that I’ll spend many more. There are a few gripes, like sometimes you can create a build that creates a stalemate with some enemies. I believe that is part of the game though. It shows the build’s weakness and it allows you to exit the fight early anyways. Hope more games like this are made in the future.

How many games have you downloaded that you never come back to? I’m guessing a lot. This game is not one of those. I tend to play this game a few minutes a day and overall have about 6 hours worth. I’ve won with each character 1 time on normal mode. That’s perfect. It hits a sweet spot where you feel like you progress constantly. Buying the extra gems and other things will definitely help in that process. If you want my opinion I think that’s the only thing this game does wrong. I truly wish they charged me $8-15 for the entire game and make in game items more easily obtainable. If I hadn’t purchased the gems pack I would have easily spent an extra 6 hours completing the first run through of each character. I feel like the game stopping at dungeon 2 for normal is weird. Why not give me the option to continue EVEN if it will ruin the play through. Make it so I CAN cash out my run and not force me to. The game is super fun though. I’d ask for a change in the games price to speed up the in game upgrades. Thankfully there is no battle pass because if there was I’d delete it on sight. Add some more characters as well. 4/5 for the gameplay being fun and replayable. Minus the star for the greed of mobile gaming.

This game is by far one of the best examples of a mobile game done RIGHT. The game has very few ads and all are optional, a lot of free gameplay (with a couple optional characters that can be bought with money), and an incredible amount of content for a free game. I’m not sure I’ve ever come across any other mobile game in all my years of playing them that handles F2P as well as this game does. Again, there’s so much here for free, and if you enjoy deck builders like slay the spire and monster train then I think you’ll find this game up there with those greats :) . The game has a TON of replayability with all of the different cards and artifacts you can experiment around with. Once this game has its hooks in you, you won’t even mind spending the little bit extra for even more content with new characters knowing it’ll be going towards helping the developer. I look forward to more awesome games like this and would love to see other mobile games strive for such quality, rather than pushing as many micro transactions and advertisements as possible.

I’ve been playing Dicey Elementalist regularly for well over a year now. This game is is everything you could possibly loom for in a great mobile roguelike. The different characters introduce wildly different gameplay, heavy RNG, and lots of cards and passives bring incredible replay value. That being said, the newest update made the game nearly unplayable. In the past, periodically you would encounter fairies that would allow you to watch an ad for a bonus. These have become much more common, which I don’t believe is a bad thing. However, there are now random long video ads that disrupt gameplay, as well as new banner ads that block critical information about the current opponent, including health and passives. This makes the game nearly impossible to play. I would be willing to pay money to remove non-optional ads from the game, as the gameplay is fantastic and I wish to support the developers. Until these actual gameplay inhibiting banner ads are removed, however, I’ll be putting this game down for good. It’s disappointing to see what used to be one of the best games in the App Store become unplayable simply because they decided to block information with banner ads.