Dice of Kalma news & patch notes

Hello Wayward Souls! This bugfix patch introduces various fixes to daily challenges and changes the color of the background depending on the selected game mode. - Fixed the game freezing on the last level of daily challenges if the player had at least one astronaut skull.

- Fixed a bug where astronaut skulls calculated their activation incorrectly on levels 10 and 20.

- Fixed the show-off achievement being unlockable in daily challenges.

- Fixed a bug where the dice were interactable for a brief moment before the first initial dice roll.

- Fixed a bug where the last hand played didn’t reset to high die between runs.

- Fixed an issue that could cause number indicator animations to freeze.

- Slightly reduced the delay before the end screen appears after winning a run.

- Slightly adjusted the difficulty curve of level thresholds in daily challenges.

- The background color changes depending on the selected game mode.

- Adjusted the UI to have no border around Kalma.

- Improved the visibility of UI border blinking when having a winning/losing hand.

Greetings Wayward Souls!! We're happy to announce that Dice of Kalma is now part of Steam Deckbuilder Fest that runs on May 4 - 11! To celebrate this event we have decided to drop you a nice little -40% discount! Over 300,000 souls have already found their way to Kalmas Underworld across all platforms. Now it's your turn! Roll the dice and see if you can claim back your soul!

Hello again, wayward souls! The 1.4 "Daily Dice" update is out now on all platforms!

This update adds a daily challenge mode, new skulls, rebalanced skull looting logic, and much more!

DAILY CHALLENGE GAME MODE:

- A short 10-level challenge where the player starts with three mechanically different skulls, but eight skulls in total: two of the skulls are given as blue, red, and yellow, and the last one is given as blue and red.

- All hand upgrades are locked to level 2, and no hand upgrades are offered during a daily challenge.

- The player must reach level 15 at least once to unlock access to daily challenges.

- A new daily challenge arrives every day at 10:00 or 11:00 UTC+0, depending on daylight saving time. The level changes globally at the same time, but the daily game mode description shows the localized time when a new daily challenge will arrive.

- If a daily challenge hasn’t been finished by the time a new one arrives, that daily challenge can’t be continued, though if the player is playing a daily challenge at the moment a new daily challenge arrives, they are allowed to finish the ongoing run unless they close the game or return to the main menu.

- Challenges and some achievements can’t be unlocked or used in daily runs.

- When playing on daily mode, some statistics will not be tracked in the player’s statistics, records, and leaderboards.

- Daily runs use the same music as endless mode past level 25.

- Four new achievements related to completing daily challenges.

NEW SKULLS:

- Knight skull: +10 bones / +2 mult / +1 reroll when playing a hand if the number of hands is even.

- Inventor skull: +10 bones / +2 mult / +1 reroll when playing a hand if at least one die is equal to the difference of its two adjacent dice.

- Spiked skull: +15 bones / +3 mult / +2 rerolls when playing a hand if the number of odd dice is equal to the middle die.

- Pot skull: +10 bones / +2 mult / +1 reroll when playing a hand if the sum of the dice is larger than 22.

MISCELLANEOUS ADDITIONS AND IMPROVEMENTS:

- The stats screen in the main menu now has the “daily challenges completed” stat.

- Kalma has a new alternate “bored” animation that triggers 33% of the time instead of Kalma falling asleep or reading a book if the player doesn’t give any input for a while.

- Added subtle sound effects to the sleeping and book-reading “bored” animations.

- Added a tutorial hint about using skull rerolls.

- Added hint dialogues for Kalma in case the player hasn’t won yet and lost due to not utilizing their skulls properly.

- The small breaks between score calculation phases are now skippable.

- The score calculation “hit marker” animations for the number indicators have been improved.

BALANCE CHANGES:

- As the skull pool is getting larger, in order to keep building a particular deck possible, skulls skipped by skull rerolls are now put on a blacklist instead of being simply shuffled back into the skull pool. This skull blacklist doesn’t care about skull colors, so if a blue skull is skipped, the red, purple, and yellow versions of that skulls are also put on the list. Skulls that the player already has in their inventory are never put on the blacklist, and if the player exhausts the skulls outside the blacklist, the list is emptied to make all skulls available again. In short, if a skull is skipped, it isn’t seen again in a while, which makes finding desired and differently colored versions of already owned skulls more likely.

- Buffed the yellow Archer skull from 1 to 2 rerolls.

- Nerfed all four color variants of Fungal skull.

- Nerfed the base mult of High Die from 2 to 1 due to the hand working so well with a very large portion of skulls.

BUGFIXES:

- Playing a High Die now highlights both the number 1 and 6 instead of only the latter, as both 1 and 6 are required to be in a hand for a High Die.

- Reroll-activated skulls now properly trigger the “hit marker” animations for bones and mult indicators.

- Fixed a bug where Kalma’s eyes could get stuck pointing down when exiting the book-reading animation.

- Localization fixes for several languages.

Hello again Wayward Souls! The 1.3. "Endless Torment" update is out now!

This update includes a new endless game mode, new skulls, new achievements, overhauled main menu, QoL updates, balance changes and more!

ENDLESS GAME MODE:

- Endless mode allows the player to continue playing past level 25, but the player won’t receive any new yellow skulls, extra hands or extra rerolls past level 25. Once all hands are at their max level, no more hand upgrades will be granted either.

- The player must win the game at least once to unlock access to endless mode.

- Winning an endless run is impossible. Challenges and some achievements can’t be unlocked or used in endless runs.

- Endless mode has its own separate leaderboard that measures how far the player makes it, not the total score.

- When playing on endless mode, some statistics such as total score, skull activations, best hand etc. will not be tracked in the player’s statistics, records and leaderboards.

- New music track that starts playing when the player has completed level 25 on endless mode.

NEW SKULLS:

- Ace skull: +15 bones / +3 mult / +2 rerolls when playing a hand if the sum of the three smallest dice is smaller or equal to the largest die.

- Bachelor skull: +15 bones / +3 mult / +2 rerolls when playing a hand if the product of the second and the fourth die is larger or equal to the the sum of all the dice.

MAIN MENU OVERHAUL:

- The main menu has been streamlined. Many less needed submenus and buttons (such as credits, statistics etc) have been moved under a new Extras menu.

- The new game button now opens a game mode selection menu where the player can choose their game mode and adjust game mode specific preferences.

- All main menu buttons now have descriptive icons in addition to text.

MISCELLANEOUS ADDITIONS AND IMPROVEMENTS:

- The run end stats screen now shows the level reached and tracks records for it.

- The stats screen in the main menu now has “endless runs started” and “highest level reached” stats.

- The Reroll Skulls button now has an icon instead of text.

- The inventory view now has an alternative listing mode that shows all skulls at once in a compact fashion. The player is able to change between different skull listing modes on the fly.

- The score calculations of reroll-activated skulls are now skipped if any of the dice are selected.

- Dice can now be selected and deselected with number keys 1-5.

- Kalma has a new alternate “bored” animation that triggers 50% of the time instead of Kalma falling asleep if the player doesn’t give any input for a while.

- Reduced the no-input timer for Kalma’s “bored” animations to start.

- Four new achievements: two for endless mode, two for the new skulls.

- Added Turkish localization.

BALANCE CHANGES:

- Drinking skull now triggers if the largest or smallest dice is equal to hands left, as previously only the smallest die was considered.

- Choked skull now triggers if the largest amount of similar dice matches with hands or rerolls, as previously it was just rerolls. The bones, mult and rerolls gained from Choked skulls were also reduced to 10, 2 and 1 respectively.

- The yellow version of executioner skull was nerfed from giving 2 rerolls to 1 reroll.

BUGFIXES:

- Fixed a bug where the effects of the challenges that remove bones and mult from hand upgrades were swapped.

- Fixed a bug where Kalma could blink while blinking or eye opening animation was already in progress.

- Fixed a bug where skipping dialogues and threshold rising animation at the start of levels 11 and 21 could cause music to be permanently muted.

- Fixed some multi-line centered texts being rendered non-pixel-perfect in some instances.

- Fixed a bug where the inventory or hand list window could remain open during the death and victory animations.

- Fixed a bug where Kalma’s eyes could sometimes point down in the victory animation if the dialogues were rapidly skipped.

Hello, wayward souls! The 1.2 "Pick Your Poison" update is finally here!

This massive update adds metaprogression with challenge runs, new skulls, balance adjustments, QoL updates, and much, much more!

Meta progression and challenge runs:

- After winning the game at least once, a new menu opens when the New Game button is pressed in the main menu. This menu houses a progression chart for various challenges that the player can select for their next run.

- Each selected challenge increases the challenge points of the run, and each set of new challenges requires winning the game with a certain amount of challenge points.

- The total score of a run is increased by 15 % for each 5 challenge points.

- Pressing the Play Again button in the stats screen after losing will start a new run with all the same challenges as the lost run.

- The Play Again button of the victory screen now has the text "New Game+" and returns the player to the main menu and immediately opens the challenge selection menu.

New skulls:

- Blank Skull: no effects. This skull can be encountered only through some of the new meta progression challenges.

- Ritual Skull: +10 bones / +2 mult / +1 reroll when playing a hand if the sum of the three dice in the middle is divisible by 3.

- Gamer Skull: +15 bones / +3 mult / +2 rerolls. When playing a hand, if the sum of the first and the last dice is equal to hands or rerolls.

- Astronaut Skull: +25 bones / +5 mult / +3 rerolls. When starting a new level, if only half or fewer of the granted hands of the previous level were played.

- Mercy Skull: +20 bones / +4 mult / +2 rerolls. After spending the last reroll if there is only one hand left, once per level.

- Dealer Skull: +10 bones / +2 mult / +1 reroll. After a reroll, if the value of the hand was reduced by the reroll, once per hand.

Balance changes:

- Slighly nerfed Bandaged Skull and the yellow version of Archer Skull.

- Slightly buffed Party Skull.

- Increased the base mult and bones of High Die to be on par with Pair.

- Adjusted the difficulty curve to be smoother.

- Reduced all level thresholds by about 10% in order to make the meta progression system more accessible. The previous level thresholds are available as part of one of the new challenges.

- A skull can now be presented only once in an instance of selecting skulls, meaning that the game won’t offer the same skull in multiple colors at once. For example, if a red Executioner Skull is presented, blue and purple Executioner skulls are unobtainable in that skull selection, even when the player uses skull rerolls.

Miscellaneous additions and improvements:

- Eight new achievements: six for the new skulls and two that require winning challenge runs.

- The skull listing menu now shows the activation status of skulls with a colored border. Green means that the skull will be activated if the current hand is played. Yellow means a reroll-activated skull has already been activated that turn. Gray means that the skull hasn’t been activated yet or that it won’t activate if the current hand is played.

- The skull listing view in the game end screen has been simplified in order to make “deck sharing” easier. The view now displays all skulls at once, but only their icons without descriptions.

- Changed all singular form instances of the word “dice” to “die” for clarity purposes, even though technically “dice” is also the singular form.

- The part of the death animation where Kalma raises the sword can now be skipped.

- The visualizations for the High Die hand in the hands listing and hand upgrade menus now show dice with both 1 and 6 as both of those numbers are required for the hand.

- All dialogue texts now have a black background in case they are on multiple lines and end up being rendered over Kalma’s skull.

- Reduced the delay before the skull selection window starts accepting input.

- It is now possible to skip score calculation and reroll animations with both Play Hand and Reroll buttons.

- Skull scoring animations can now be skipped.

- The threshold rising animation at the beginning of each level can now be skipped.

- The game now defaults the localization setting to the system language if it is being run for the very first time.

Bugfixes:

- Fixed Party Skull achievement being unachievable on some devices.

- Fixed the blue version of Executioner skull giving 5 too many bones.

- Fixed a bug where the pause menu could be opened while the death animation was starting.

- Fixed a bug where Kalma’s blinking could disrupt eye animations dictated by some dialogues.

- Fixed a bug where the title text of the run end screen could overlap with the "new record" text in some languages.

- Fixed the rendering of centered texts that were fixable. Some centered texts may still appear non-pixel-perfect.

- Fixed the game freezing when loading a run that was saved in the skull selection screen.

- Fixed the game crashing on some devices.

1.1.5 patch notes

- QoL: dice reroll animations can be skipped by pressing the reroll button.

- QoL: the current score calculation animation phase can be skipped by pressing the Play Hand button. Skull score calculation phase remains unskippable.

- Localization updates and fixes.

- Three new languages: Ukrainian, Lithuanian and Traditional Chinese.

- Added Steam leaderboards and buttons to view them in both the main menu and end of run stats screens.

Looking for a nice, simple game to play on the side while working on your MacBook? Tired of playing around with different Proton versions on Linux or SteamDeck? We got you! Dice of Kalma is now available natively on MacOS and Linux, including SteamDeck.

First off, we want to begin by thanking everyone who has followed us on this journey so far! Every single person who commented, tested the demo or a test build of the game, or just talked about it, thank you!

Last summer we started working on a small dice roller deckbuilder prototype that combines the dice hands from Yatshee with building a deck out of beneficial score counting rulesets. Together with an easily approachable gameplay loop, atmospheric retro pixel art and crunchy chiptune music, these things grew to what we have released today.

Dice of Kalma releases with a 20% launch discount, so seize the opportunity and go all in!

Go forth, wayward souls, and challenge the guardian of the Underworld!

As a small team of indie developers, there are many ways you can make an impact and support us and the game.

- If you buy the game, please consider leaving an honest review on Steam! Reviews have a massive impact on indie games and we'd love to see your thoughts and experiences through a review. We will read every single one!

- Sharing the game through word of mouth with family and friends or on social media with your followers can really help spread the word and give others a chance to discover their next adventure. So many indies are discovered with a simple share or casual discussion.

- Join our Discord to get to meet the devs and to talk about the intricasies of the game with other players.

Hey everyone! We’ve got some big news — Dice of Kalma officially launches on Steam on November 14! 🥳

It’s been a wild ride bringing this dark little dice roguelike to life. Thank you to everyone who tried the demo, shared feedback, or just kept the game wishlisted ❤️

Soon you’ll get to roll your fate for real. Dive into eerie runs, chase high scores, and see how far you can make it before the darkness takes over.

🕯️ Release Date: November 14 🌀 Genre: Dice roguelike / puzzle / strategy 💀 Goal: Survive the Finnish god of death and escape the underworld

Add it to your wishlist if you haven’t yet — it really helps us out before launch.

Can’t wait to see your runs and hear what you think of the game!

– The Pepperbox Studios Team

Come join us in our celebration of Steam Next Fest

'Tis the season again when we showcase new and upcoming games. Dice of Kalma will be playable throughout the whole Next Fest event. Share your gameplay, give us feedback and join in on the conversation in our social media channels and Discord: https://linktr.ee/diceofkalma

- Improved the clarity of intro and tutorial dialogues.

- Added dialogue that hints the player to try previewing TOTAL by holding the PLAY HAND button.

- Score preview now shows the preview for REROLL gain in addition to BONES, MULT and TOTAL.

- Split the LEVEL title into LEVEL and THRESHOLD for improved UI clarity.

- Added a subtle looping animation of two arrows pointing at the title of the skull loot and hand upgrade screens at the end of level 1.

- Added a "+1" text on the level of the selected hand in the hand upgrade screen.

- The border of the UI area now blinks red when the player is on their last hand and playing the hand wouldn't result in enough TOTAL to avoid losing. The blinking effect stops if the player manages to salvage the situation by using REROLLS.

- Fixed spacing issues in some dialogues.

- Fixed victory dialogues triggering when losing on level 10.

Dice of Kalma is playable during the Steam Next Fest from Oct 13th at 10 AM PT until Oct 20th at 10 AM PT

What you can expect from the demo:

Experience the first 10 levels

Collect skulls, find synergies, win the Finnish god of death in a game of dice.

Choose your play style

Build your deck out of 200+ different skulls that each synergize differently with the dice hands you play.

After Next Fest

We are looking to release the full version of the game in the upcoming weeks after Next Fest, so remember to wishlist!

Follow the event

Set yourself a reminder to get notified when Next Fest goes live! Don’t forget to follow and wishlist the game as well as join our Discord community to be notified of future announcements! All links can be found below.