An Absurd RPG About Rolling Dice And Making Pizza Debuts Its First Chapter Free On Steam
Try your luck in this absurd RPG.
For all they have in common, video games have a strangely difficult time capturing the magic of tabletop RPGs (TTRPGs). Aside from straightforward adaptations and the occasional sleeper hit that gets the mechanics right, tabletop-inspired video games usually suffer for their lack of improvisational opportunities and the absence of the satisfying clickety-clack of dice across a table. But the next game from a cult favorite indie developer already looks like one of the best to ever bridge that gap before it’s even released, and the entire first chapter is available to play for free.
Cosmo D Studios is the developer behind acclaimed indie hits Tales from Off-Peak City, The Norwood Suite, and 2022’s IGF grand prize-winning RPG Betrayal at Club Low. The developer’s next game, Moves of the Diamond Hand, builds on the dice-based mechanics of Betrayal at Club Low and the immaculately bizarre vibes of its entire catalog. Starting February 13, the game’s roughly three-hour first chapter is available free on Steam, with the rest of the game launching later in Early Access.
Moves of the Diamond Hand is already gorgeous and beguiling and its first chapter.
As Moves of the Diamond Hand opens, you’re on a train on your way to join the circus. To be more specific, you’re trying to win your way into Circus X, an elite artistic group whose members enjoy the kind of fame and fortune you’d do anything to have a share of. By the time you leave the train, you’ve had a chance encounter with your former professor turned railroad worker and decided on exactly how you’ll impress the crew enough to be invited to join — whether it’s through your musical skill, your quick wit, or the ability to make the best sandwich the world has ever seen.
In Moves of the Diamond Hand, skills like Cooking and Wit take the place of more conventional RPG stats like Strength. Each skill is represented by a die that’s rolled when the skill is used, and your goal in every check is to beat the total on your opponent’s dice. Leveling up means individually increasing the numbers on each face of your dice, which start as a split of zeroes and ones. From the outset, it’s a clever system that takes advantage of the randomness of dice. Do you increase every number on your dice to prevent the chance of ever rolling a zero, or pump a few numbers as high as you can and hope to get lucky on each roll?
Moves of the Diamond Hand’s dice mechanics are just as captivating as its surreal world.
Stepping onto the train platform and rolling to avoid a spilled cup of bubble tea shows where the dice system really takes off. Whether you pass or fail, most skill checks give your character a Condition — status effects which can be either positive or negative. Conditions add new dice to your hand to be rolled with relevant skills, and can add to or subtract from your total result, or cause damage, depending on which face they land on. Because of that, it’s often possible to pass checks that would otherwise be impossible, or find even your best-laid plans going awry because you’re covered in boba or you reached your hand into a trash can and now you stink.
Moves of the Diamond Hand’s take on dice-based skill checks is brilliant, but it’s the game’s surreal world that already makes it feel like a must-play RPG. The train station where the first chapter opens is full of hostile, genetically modified pigeons. A pizza place in the basement lets you cook your own pie and turn it into health-restoring dice. A mayoral election is underway, and one of the leading candidates is a former mayor brought back to life 100 years after his first term. In the shadows, a mysterious figure known as the Diamond Hand seems to be pulling the city’s strings, and you’ve yet to discover how you fit into the plan. The game’s dialogue is dripping with style and humor, and around every corner is something wildly unexpected to discover.
On top of all that, Moves of the Diamond Hand shares the signature aesthetics of Cosmo D, with its jazzy, electronic-infused soundtrack and a mishmash of lo-fi visual styles that gives the whole game the look of something approaching digital collage. The unique tone of its writing and its absurd aesthetics make the first chapter of Moves of the Diamond Hand utterly captivating. I can’t wait to play through it again and see what would have been different if I’d chosen to devote myself to musical mastery rather than crafting the perfect sandwich. There’s no word yet on when the rest of the game will be released, but its first chapter alone makes the case that it will be one of the most exciting games of the year.
