Die of the Dead

Dia de Muertos (the Day of the Dead) is a Mexican tradition that reunites the living and the dead. People will build altars, place food and drinks and give gifts to remember and honour their loved ones. These offerings are believed to encourage visits of the departed souls back to the land of the living to join in celebrations. Die of the Dead is a two to five player dice rolling game designed by James Allen and Mark Stockton-Pitt and published by Radical 8 Games. The game is based around the above tradition in which players take on the roles of friendly spirits guiding souls (aka dice) from the world of the dead to the land of the living. The first player to do this is the winner.

On a player’s turn they will select one of the four caskets and perform the respective action underneath it. This may involve adding souls, preparing souls, moving caskets and ascending die. Players will also gain candles, incense, marigolds and bread to them.

The above is a very brief overview of the rules/gameplay but hopefully gives you enough of an idea of what the game is about.

Final Thoughts

Die of the Dead has taken, what could be a sensitive topic, and respectfully created a game around it. The Mexican inspired artwork inspired by the culture of the tradition is absolutely stunning and the game certainly has table presence. But how does it play? Read on to find out more about what I thought of the game.

The core rules are relatively straightforward. There are four action tiles associated with four caskets. On your turn you select a casket and perform the corresponding action. The actions themselves are very easy to understand and may involve adding a soul to a casket, preparing souls, shaking caskets, comparing die results and moving caskets. The casket associated with the fourth action spot is the only spot that can be used to ascend souls. The whole visual look, artwork and gameplay is wonderful. It looks stunning on the table and turns are lightning quick.

There is a memory element to the game as the only casket where the dice are visible is the first one. Whenever this moves the lid is closed and you have to remember what is in each casket. This adds a fun wrinkle into the game as what is in the casket will depend on the action that you may want to perform. The odds will be in your favour if you have more dice, but can you remember exactly what is in each of the four caskets as they move. There is a variant to play with the lids off so all is visible, but for me the memory element adds an element of fun and risk into the game.

There is a wonderful physical element to the game of picking up the casket and shaking it as well as the steps “marigold stairs” that are used for players to place their die. This gives you bonuses on certain spots but the 3-D physical nature of climbing these stairs is a very cool.

There is a fair amount of luck in the game as many actions involve shaking the caskets (effectively rolling the dice) and comparing the pip values. Some of the tokens do help to mitigate this but the luck factor is high and it is worth knowing this before jumping in. You can also gain power souls which have the ability to be changed to any value. However, the game is fairly quick and will probably take around 30 to 45 minutes max. For what you are doing, the complexity of the game and the type of game this is, I personally don’t have an issue with the luck.

Overall, I think Die of the Dead is a very fun game. It has taken a theme that (as far as I am aware) not been done before and made it fun, colourful and enjoyable game, whilst retaining the cultural aspects. To keep the game fresh the player boards have a reverse side with player powers and the token powers can also be flipped to show different powers. Highly recommend that you check out Die of the Dead if anything I have said sounds appealing.