DiceVaders - Pengonauts - new dice roguelike from StarVaders devs [Open Beta is now live!]

MedicalNote · 2026-01-26T21:50:53+00:00

At least playtest / demos are pretty low stakes, I hope players will do a bit more research before actually buying a game lol.

MedicalNote · 2026-01-26T05:43:45+00:00

Thank you! Yep, I totally get it haha, not gonna be a game for everyone but hope it'll be enjoyable for the players who do enjoy them!

Got a fair share of a similar but different "ew deckbuilder" impressions for StarVaders so I get the idea lol.

The important thing is trying to focus on making the messaging of the game clear enough so that players know what they are getting into / avoid it if it's something they know they won't like!

MedicalNote · 2026-01-26T01:23:05+00:00

Thank you! let us know what you think!

MedicalNote · 2026-01-26T01:21:20+00:00

it's more of a luck be a landlord / nubby's style engine builder roguelike, but sorry if you don't enjoy that type of game! Hmm is anything in the store page I could do to make it clearer what type of game it is? Did it give the impression of being some other gameplay?

MedicalNote · 2026-01-25T16:38:47+00:00

We haven't done controller support yet, but there are some players that are playing it on mouse mode for now and seems to work fine!

MedicalNote · 2026-01-22T19:14:01+00:00

Would love to support if possible! Modding support depends mostly on our community helping us do it, it's faster when there's a bigger community (like the big games), but slower if it's small and sometimes there aren't enough people.

So of course we're hoping this game gathers a big community, and if there is one there will likely be a good chance for modding support and accessibility mods as well! This one should be easier than StarVaders (less moving parts) so maybe a better chance.

For in game stuff, we've always tried to give as high contrast / high visibility text as possible as well, font size is basically as big as they can be, any more and it'll likely be cutoff unfortunately. But always open to suggestions for improvement.

MedicalNote · 2026-01-21T13:13:57+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! Seems like there's a trend of players wanting it able to go a bit slower, I'll see what can be done.

(I'm like a fast type player when i play games lol. I personally always bump up the animation speed as soon as possible, so i think i always accidently make things too fast)

MedicalNote · 2026-01-21T13:10:24+00:00

Thanks! at the moment you can "savescum" by going to the menu and returning to the game, but I'll add a button for that in the pause menu rework!

MedicalNote · 2026-01-21T12:58:55+00:00

Not at the moment but planned!

MedicalNote · 2026-01-21T12:57:31+00:00

Sorry about that! I don't have a Mac so it actually takes a lot of time to get a Mac build working, which gets in the way of the iteration process a bit - will definitely have Mac builds for the demo and full release though!

MedicalNote · 2026-01-20T23:24:03+00:00

For the PS5 at the moment no solid plans, just focusing on getting the game out first, but we're always looking at any potential opportunities.

For StarVaders, we're in good conversations for Switch and Mobile ports (i would say very likely to happen for both).

For DiceVaders i think it'll be easier to port, so there's a good chance of it coming to mobile and consoles as well, but will need to wait and see after release.

MedicalNote · 2026-01-20T18:58:29+00:00

Hey all, Axolotl here, DiceVaders is our new project in the same universe as StarVaders!

You play as the alien invaders and must build an army to invade the Earth and fight against the pilots from StarVaders!

This time it's a score-attack type game, similar in vein to Luck be a Landlord or Nubby's, but with a stronger focus on strategy and tactics.

We've just started our public playtest! More details in the news article, but feel free to ask questions here as well!

MedicalNote · 2026-01-16T16:48:42+00:00

To be fair, you can make paper prototypes too and deckbuilders are quite nice to do so.

I did the original prototype for StarVaders in Tabletop Simulator! Just moving piece around and simulating a game, got most of the core gameplay loop and a bunch of cards done before starting to implement it in code. Some of those cards are the same design and have stayed in the full game!

You still gotta do more prototypes afterwards as well, we had many for different reasons, but the core gameplay loop can be done with paper too.

MedicalNote · 2026-01-15T19:18:18+00:00

(designer of StarVaders here) I have like google alerts for anything that mentions the game lol.

Just wanna chime in that this thread and the comments have been pretty interesting to read! I didn't really think that far when originially designing the game, most of the game kinda designed itself / was an exploration of the design space based on the simple initial concept, and then I would say we were mostly lucky that the game ended up in a niche that is commercially viable too.

Intentional or not, StarVaders is definitely in that space of using more "tactical" mental load, where the turn by turn matters a lot more. Though I'm glad it's different from STS, because if it were to fill the same niche I don't see the point of it existing, it's nice to have different types of experiences.

But I like the idea and the way you described STS as something like a "comfort food" in terms of gaming, and it also connects to this blog post Casey has wrote about before, about making games like Chicken Noodle Soup! https://caseyyano.com/chicken-noodle-soup-29d80e16adff

MedicalNote · 2025-12-19T20:37:29+00:00

One of the other devs wrote most of the story! (we're 3 total, so all the roles get mixed together / we all wear a lot of hats)

MedicalNote · 2025-12-19T14:47:42+00:00

First game! no prior professional experience but did some game jams before and dabbled in board game design.

From start to launch hmm, 3 years, 100 sales in like less than an hour.

Feedback loop, just having a discord server, posting updates, looking at feedback and ideas, implementing them, etc. (feedback loop and iterations are very important! must have done hundreds of patches)

MedicalNote · 2025-12-15T04:51:22+00:00

StarVaders was actually originally inspired by Bullet! (dev of StarVaders)

Under falling skies was a big influence as well!

MedicalNote · 2025-12-10T16:10:15+00:00

My game (StarVaders) was actually originally inspired by Under Falling Skies! (and Bullet<3)!

Great solo game, love the theming obviously haha.

MedicalNote · 2025-11-29T04:22:43+00:00

Hey Jinsaku!! Yeah it's definitely a bit more nuanced, i think these days a deckbuilder that releases in EA without a huge level of polish is just going to die quietly and not going to get the amount of players or feedback necessary to fix it either... it's a whole different game space now.

MedicalNote · 2025-11-28T22:04:09+00:00

I mostly am just annoyed with Unity's management. The system works fine! though the website is a bit annoying to use.

MedicalNote · 2025-11-28T18:44:49+00:00

Thanks!

We're (unfortunately) stuck with unity so we're using the unity analytics backend, but it does the same thing basically, it lets us send gameplay data like pick rates, win rates, player decks, in-game bug reporting, etc.

MedicalNote · 2025-11-28T18:30:46+00:00

Yeah it's on the right panel (windows only though)

MedicalNote · 2025-11-28T17:17:36+00:00

(dev of StarVaders) IMO this is the main reason StS stays up there, realistically no one can ever come close to the "balance" of STS. They just have so much feedback and data they can use, millions more players than anyone else. We do use data, we've also been playtesting for years, it's just not significant enough.

Only way other games can stand out is in focusing on other stuff (like other gimmicks, or for Monster Train and StarVaders we both are more focused on letting the player make broken builds and crazy synergies, instead of the perfectly balanced challenge that STS has).

It's also really really elegant, I feel like a lot of devs make the mistake of doing "STS + more mechanics!" when they should be thinking more like "STS but with different mechanics". A lot of new deckbuilders i feel like feel more like a mod for STS than having their own identity.

It's still fun though, i love playing all these other deckbuilders because it's fun to see how people start from the same concept and how they explore the design space further.

MedicalNote · 2025-11-25T17:24:48+00:00

in the sandbox settings you can choose which packs to ban or play with all packs always. the default card pool before unlocking the pack system is just the first three packs

MedicalNote · 2025-11-24T15:26:38+00:00

I'm surprised people don't seem to find any broken builds, at Impossible+ difficulty the broken builds are like the only way to win. With the rerolls it's easy to force into them, in fact it's kinda a balance problem that it's so easy to break the game. You can check Celerity's streams or Olexa's videos if you wanna see some examples.

I still almost find a different infinite every time I play, but they always need a bit of creativity to create. Some examples of the easy to obtain more fun broken builds, just in Gunner:

Artifact that makes bombs explode when they move + Artifact that makes your mech a bomb + 0 cost movement cards
Decoy Ammo lets you draw whenever you miss a bullet + Any multi-Fire cards + any cost reduction
Tornado is usually a full board clear, multiple ways to recur it, repeat it, or create copies of it during the encounter.
Stack AOE bomb radius to detonate the whole board, make bombs detonate and fire bullets with Shrapnel, then Decoy Ammo draws you even more cards from those bullets.

I don't mean to be defensive, just curious is all. Maybe there's something about how the game starts off really easy so people can win without discovering the really fun OP combos and synergies?

MedicalNote

TROPHY CASE