The dice are as deadly as the pixelart is lush in dungeon RPG The Fortress

Alas and alack for Lickity Split, knight hero of The Fortress, prisoner of a villainous Sorceror King. ‘Twas I who named him (I wanted a pun on “Lich” and I’m fairly sure we’ve done “Lich My Balls” several times before) and ‘twas I who led him to his death a whole six rooms away from his cell… and ‘twas I who then resurrected him as a wizard and got him killed again, a mere five minutes later.

It’s not my fault, though. Lickity Split appears to have terrible luck, if not an actual Luck stat, and The Fortress is a dungeon crawler with a murderous fixation on dice. As regards the opening stretch of the Steam demo, at least, each fight sees you rolling dice of three different colours, then spending their pips to attack enemies with health points of the same colour. If the colours don’t match up, you’ll have to end the turn and take damage.

The get-out clause is that any unused dice fill up a Super Mega Ultra AOE Attack gauge when you end the turn. This dishes out punishment without regard for niceties of coloration. That’s not much consolation if you get hacked to death before the gauge fills completely, though. Woe unto Lickity Split! I thought he was doing pretty well until he ran into that ghost dog.

There are nine character classes in The Fortress, each of which favours a different dice hue, or combination of hues. There are also three slots for equipment pieces that modify the dice, or confer shorter-lived benefits. A rusty shield will cancel one incoming attack before disintegrating; an enchanted scroll will add a pip to your blue magic die. There are also potential allies, or at least beings who are not initially enemies: “vampire merchants, fallen abbots, and other sinister figures, each hiding secrets and ulterior motives”.

Somewhere in the citadel above lurks your jailor. After dying twice to a ghost dog in room 6, I do not want to know how many different shapes and colours of dice it takes to kill the Sorceror King. Perhaps I can persuade him to play checkers instead.

I flailingly compared The Fortress to The Legend of Grimrock and Eye Of The Beholder in this week’s Maw, but it seems a lot simpler so far – a steady, linear onslaught of fights with the occasional treasure room, and precious little to distract you from the throwing of the bones. The retro presentation is lovely: heaving, gaping, pixelated enemies and walls of bruised and abraded shadow. I’d say it’s worth a pop at the demo, at least, if you like the screens. The full game launches on Steam tomorrow.