Dicing Knight Period

Dicing Knight Period is among the very last games released for the WonderSwan Color and is also one of the most sought-after items on the entire console. It's a compact dungeon crawler in which a heroine descends into the depths and fights whatever comes her way. Battles are built around dice: the values rolled determine how strong an attack will be or how good the defense is, and the player tries to piece together the best possible move from random results. Chance is thus built right into the core of the game, but it isn't all-powerful, since it's surrounded by plenty of decisions about equipment and about when to attack and when it's better to retreat.

The whole thing is deliberately short and focused. A single run can be finished in one sitting, the game pushes toward repetition and toward improving the player's own skill rather than long stat-grinding, and that's exactly why it sits on the border between a classic roguelike and an arcade game chasing the best possible score. Technically, it's a good-looking title with striking sprites, a clean interface, and snappy responsiveness that works great on the small display; the music has an unmistakable electronic flair you'd expect from a small Japanese studio.

The game came out when the WonderSwan Color was already winding down and the print run was very small, so it quickly became a collector's item, and original cartridges rank among the most expensive on the platform. Studio Qute built a reputation among handheld gaming fans for carefully polished, dense games, and Dicing Knight Period is a good example of that: it has neither a big story nor much scope, but what it does, it does with remarkable precision. Today it's mainly interesting as a forerunner of the wave of modern roguelikes built around dice and random resources that arrived a good fifteen years later. Anyone who plays it will likely be surprised to find that the principles driving the entire genre today were already worked out in fine detail at the twilight of one Japanese handheld console's life.