Lost In Random: The Eternal Die is a solid little rogue-lite, featuring the antagonist of the first game. That was a third-person action-adventure title. Here we’re in isometric camera land. It’s quick, is just the right length, and full of fun callbacks to the original. The screen can get a bit busy, and some might find it a smidge too easy. Let’s break down the good (lots) and bad (fewer lots).
Mare of Dicetown
LiR: The Eternal Die takes place directly after the first game. You play as the ‘evil’ Queen from the first game. Depowered and made wittle, you and your sentient dice Fortune will fight through multiple stages to reach Mare the Knight. He’s a big dickhead, and is torturing many of the souls you defeated in the first game.
This is a roguelite through and through, with a focus on runs and meta-progression. There are four weapon types: Sword, Bow, Spear, and Hammer. They all feel just different enough that when paired with the game’s conservative runtime, mastering and upgrading each one felt great.
As you go between areas in each stage, you may encounter NPCs who will join you back at your Sanctuary camp. One unlocks and upgrades those weapons, another slowly restores the Queen’s power, and others let you play dress up. It’s a tried and true system with enough variety and depth here to make that “one more run” feeling always be in the back of your mind.
Fortune’s Favor
The gameplay in LiR: The Eternal Die is frenetic, with non-stop movement and button-mashing. A is said dash, wish a short internal cooldown. X is your basic attack when spammed and can be charged up for a bigger hit. Weapon upgrades can change what those charged moves on each weapon type.
B lets you pick up Fortune and toss him at enemies for extra damage. It’s used in puzzles as well, seeing which number you get to do various tasks. Y is your Card button, aka spells. You start each run with a random spell and need to hit enemies to get the energy needed for magical attacks. If you’ve played Hades, then you’ll be familiar with how this title feels. It’s a bit less precise but close enough to feel fair.
The runs themselves consist of a series of interconnected diamond-shaped rooms. As you enter each one, a fog clears and you’re faced with either combat scenarios, light environmental puzzles, or games of chance. Like most of the game, it takes systems many of us know and love and adds just enough of that “Lost in Random” touch to them. One rough area, as can be in Hades, is how full of explosions and effects the screen becomes.
One of my favorite parts of the game is the per-run upgrade system. You’ll color-match items to gain extra weapon, card, dice, and conjuration damage. There is also luck, and as you pair up passive bonus items and make 3 of a kind color matches, you become far more powerful. You’ll need to do it each run, and it’s the best way to customize a build around whichever card power you have.
Pretty Obscur
The Eternal Die is a good-looking game, weighing in at only a few GB of file size. It ran great on Series X, where I played the entirety of my review. It is a Day One Game Pass title and Play Anywhere, so you can hop between console and PC as you like. I love the art style in Lost in Random, and that continues here, albeit in a bit more of a cartoonish fashion. The game is colorful, feels like a locked 60 fps, and occasionally can be far too busy to tell exactly what’s happening.
It didn’t happen all the time, but when it did, there was a lot of frustration as reading character attack timings felt impossible. The short internal cooldown on the base dash led to a lot of unnecessary damage. Thankfully, the voice acting is excellent, and I enjoyed the soundtrack.
The writing was succinct, giving short conversations that never felt like I was being exposition-dumped. There are some choices to be made regarding the ending, and I felt satisfied with mine. Outside of that, the run-based nature of the game and how my choices always felt like they were gaining me more power or just something in general was great.
Wrapping Things Up
Lost in Random: The Eternal Die is a short, fun experience. It takes all the classic elements of the roguelite genre and meshes them into this world seamlessly. It’s well worth checking out whether at full price or via Game Pass.
Lost in Random: The Eternal Die
Played on
Xbox Series X
PROS
- Gameplay
- Story
- One-More-Run pull
CONS
- Obfuscated visuals at times
