There are lots of games from my childhood that have been all but forgotten by the world, yet I still fondly remember. Kula World. Starsky & Hutch: The Game. Unirally. These games shaped my gaming experience, admittedly less so than the unequivocally excellent titles like Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Tekken, Tomb Raider, and Tony Hawk’s I played alongside them, but still – they were the business. And through the years covering gaming, I’ve seen other Kula Worlds pop up; games that I know some people will hold onto dearly, even as the world moves on. One such game was Lost in Random, but now, it’s getting another chance at success with a sequel.
Lost in Random: The Eternal Die was revealed last August, but only recently got a trailer that emphasises just how different it is from the original, though the basic underlying gimmick still exists as the foundation. Lost in Random launched in 2021 to positive reviews but few players, which oddly suited it as a game with a killer premise but a limited amount of intrigue beneath the surface. The Eternal Die looks set to fix that, which is exactly what this quirky idea deserves.
Though Lost in Random was made by Zoink and The Eternal Die by Thunderful, they are the same company with Zoink absorbed into Thunderful just before Lost in Random launched.
Lost In Random’s Dice Gimmick Is Still One Of The Smartest In Gaming
In Lost in Random, you’re armed with a magic dice. When you attack, you roll the dice, with different power ups for different rolls, putting RNG in full control. You can still create builds by deciding what each number does, as well as collecting cards to build a deck to manipulate or add more strength to the dice.
This part was one of the areas where the game fell down for me – dice and cards, while similar, are two different sorts of chance games. Thematically and mechanically, I never felt the deckbuilding and dice rolling went together – there are no cards in Craps and no dice in Poker, after all.
But the actual dice-aided combat was very fun, and the art style had a nice appeal too. Though not entirely original as a bit of a Tim Burton riff, it still felt different from the hyper realism/chibi/anime triumvirate so many games tend to draw from. The urchin wonderland story had potential too, but was bogged down in being an adventure game and an RPG with NPC quests and optional areas, as well as an action game and a deck-builder. Lost in Random could not do it all at once. It was, as I recently wrote about Apple’s The Gorge, a premise in search of a plot.
Ultimately, the best thing about Lost in Random was the thing that made it special. The dice rolling felt tactile with some cute animations and ASMR-inspired foley design (that’s how film dorks say ‘it sounded nice’), and the range of powers was surprising and effective. But in terms of being great, or even on the upper side of good, everything else dragged it down. That’s why The Eternal Die is so exciting.
Lost In Random Is Perfect For A Roguelike
The Eternal Die is keeping the dice rolling, but not much else. It’s now an action-roguelike, and while the trailer is doing a very good impression of ‘Hades with dice’, that sounds like a good enough pitch to me. The recent wave of roguelikes is a little reductive in a post-Hades world, but streamlining what works about Lost in Random while shearing off the RPG and adventure wandering fluff is the best move the game could make.
The Eternal Die is also a very clever name for a dice-based roguelike.
The trailer (and demo, which is out now) shows the dice being tossed towards enemies for randomised AoE attacks, while you still have a melee weapon and dash ability to avoid attacks. It’s otherwise your basic Hadeslike, with Hades surely making a case for replacing Rogue as the genre moniker by now. There are smaller mobs who fire projectiles and overwhelm the battlefield in small spaces, and larger boss enemies with methodical attacks to dash past in order to deal massive damage.
There are even Blessings and Enhancements instead of Boons, and items to gather to form cards (in a nod to the original in a way that feels less invasive to the dice theme) which gives it extra identity beyond just the dice, but it feels as though Thunderful has figured out a way to bring Lost in Random’s best parts to the surface. After hitting snake eyes, the do over might be on for big red.
-
OpenCritic
-
Top Critic Rating:
78/100
- Released
-
September 10, 2021
- Developer(s)
-
Zoink