Deviled Dice

What Is Deviled Dice?

Deviled Dice is a tabletop-style roguelite dicebuilder where you beat the devil at his own game by cheating harder than he does. A cursed board game drags you into a duel for your soul. Every time you win a round, the devil responds the only way he knows how: he raises the score, twists the rules, and rigs the game in his favor. Your answer is to cheat right back.

The game comes from Juicy Beast, the Montreal-based studio behind Burrito Bison and Knightmare Tower, and it is coming to Steam in 2027. A playable demo already exists on itch.io, where it has earned a 4.7 out of 5 rating from 374 players. Designer Yowan from Juicy Beast describes the pitch in one line: take the Balatro formula and bolt it onto the classic Yacht dice game, then dress the whole thing as a cursed board game you would find in the basement of an old house.

The art style is doing a lot of the selling. Everything is hand-animated in a mid-century cartoon look, no generative AI anywhere in the credits, and the hell Juicy Beast has built is more 1950s animation cell than fire and brimstone. Lore details are scattered as hints around the board, and the studio is openly inviting players to guess the backstory.

Deviled Dice Details

How to Play Deviled Dice

The full game is not out yet, but the demo lays out the core systems and they map cleanly onto what the Steam page promises.

The duel structure. You and the devil take turns rolling dice and filling score slots, Yacht-style: three of a kind, straights, full houses, that family of combinations. Fill the scorepad better than the devil and you win the round.

The devil cheats. Win, and he responds by inflating the target scores and twisting the rules for the next round. A rule twist might change which combinations count, how dice behave, or what your slots are worth. The game is explicitly designed around escalation: every win makes the board less fair.

You cheat back. This is the actual game. You rig your dice for suspicious luck, swap rules mid-game when it suits you, and combine relics borrowed from other tabletop games to set the scorepad on fire. The demo community has already crowned its villains: red meat is famously overpowered, and the hungry pachyderm relic shows up in half the strategy comments on itch.io.

Relics and build crafting. Relics are the dicebuilder's equivalent of jokers. Each one bends a rule, and the real scores come from stacking relics whose bends multiply each other. Between rounds you pick new pieces for your build, so runs diverge fast.

Push your luck. Every roll is a decision about what to keep and what to reroll. Because the devil adjusts the goalposts between rounds, hoarding safe points rarely survives long. The game rewards players who lean into dirty combos early instead of playing it straight.

The Demo: What It Covers

The free itch.io demo is a few months of work built to test the core idea, per the developer's notes. It includes the full duel loop, a shelf of relics, rule tampering, and multiple bosses. Player feedback singles out two recurring notes: the red meat relic needs a nerf, and some players want an option to skip bosses. Both are signals the demo is a real vertical slice, not a teaser.

The demo runs in browser (HTML5) or as a Windows download, needs only a mouse, and a typical session runs about half an hour. Comments on the page have been begging for a mobile port since launch, which tells you how well the click-driven control scheme travels.

Getting Started: What to Know Before Release

Play the demo first. It is free, it runs in a browser tab, and it is the same core loop the Steam version will ship with. If the cheat-the-cheater rhythm hooks you in thirty minutes, wishlist and wait; if not, you saved yourself the price of admission.

Steam page is live now. Juicy Beast announced the Steam version at the end of October 2026 with a reveal trailer, targeting 2027. Wishlisting now is the main way to support a studio of this size before launch.

Expect single-player only. The Steam categories list single-player and Family Sharing. No multiplayer is announced, and the duel-versus-devil structure does not need one.

Know the studio. Juicy Beast made Burrito Bison, one of the most successful Flash-era launcher games ever, and Knightmare Tower. Their track record is approachable systems with juicy feedback, and the itch demo shows the same DNA.

Tips for the Demo

Read the rule twist before you build. When the devil changes the rules, the temptation is to click through and keep rolling. Pause and reread: a combination you were building around may now be worthless, and the relic shelf usually contains an answer to the new rule.

Red meat early, red meat often. The community consensus on the demo's strongest relic. If it appears in your shop, the greedy pick is almost always correct.

Fight the bosses with a plan, not points. Boss rounds shift the win condition, so a scorepad strategy that crushed the last three rounds can fall apart instantly. Keep at least one flexible relic slot for boss answers.

Reroll with intent. Yacht scoring tempts you into holding safe combinations every turn. In Deviled Dice the devil raises targets, so late-safe points stop mattering. Turn medium rolls into relic-fueled monsters instead of banking small wins.

Guess the lore. The cursed board game is hiding its backstory in the details around the board, and the developer explicitly wants players guessing. Basement setting, the house above, the previous owner: look at the furniture.

Advanced Tips

• Stack multiplicative bends, not additive ones. Relics that add flat points fall off as the devil inflates scores. Relics that change how scores are calculated scale with the inflation. Build around rule-benders.
• Learn the devil's escalation pattern. His response to each of your wins follows a rhythm. Players who note what changed after each round start predicting the next twist and pre-building for it.
• Characters change mechanics, not just cosmetics. Multiple playable characters are confirmed for the full version, each with their own approach. Expect run archetypes to form around specific characters once the full game ships.
• Track what the community breaks. Juicy Beast reads the itch comments closely, and demo-breaking combos tend to get rebalanced before launch. Whatever is dominant now is the window to learn the game's ceiling.

Developer Background

Juicy Beast is a small studio from Montreal, Canada, active since the Flash portal era. Burrito Bison launched a franchise that ran through multiple sequels and millions of players, and Knightmare Tower got a mobile follow-up. Deviled Dice started as an internal prototype during a testing phase, according to the developer's notes, before graduating to a full project. The studio funds itself through its back catalog and keeps its community on itch.io, where it posts devlogs and answers comments directly. The Steam announcement devlog went up on October 29, 2026.

FAQ

When does Deviled Dice release? 2027 on Steam for Windows. No exact date announced yet.

Is Deviled Dice free? The itch.io demo is free (name your own price). The full Steam version will be a paid title, price not announced.

Can I play Deviled Dice right now? Yes. The free demo runs in your browser or as a Windows download on the Juicy Beast itch.io page.

What kind of game is it? A roguelite dicebuilder: Yacht-style dice rolls, Balatro-style relic combos, and a devil who cheats between rounds until you outcheat him.

Does it have multiplayer? No. Steam lists single-player only.

Who made Deviled Dice? Juicy Beast, the Canadian studio behind Burrito Bison and Knightmare Tower.

Community Links

• Steam page
• itch.io demo and devlog
• Reveal trailer on YouTube

Final Verdict

Deviled Dice is the post-Balatro wave doing what it does best: taking one clean mechanic, in this case the Yacht scorepad, and rebuilding it around a villain who refuses to play fair. The demo is free, polished, and mechanically complete, with a 4.7 rating from hundreds of players backing it up. Play the demo this afternoon; if you are still thinking about it at dinner, wishlist the Steam version for 2027.