Due to my age, and not having access to cable because the company wouldn’t extend the line to our house, I didn’t get to watch much Nickelodeon. In fact, most of my experiences with some of their earlier shows, like Rugrats, came from watching YTV while at my grandparents’. Of course, I mostly watched it for Video and Arcade Top 10 and Are You Afraid of the Dark?
The paragraph above is a long-winded way of saying that I don’t have a lot of nostalgia for Nickelodeon, or its flagship shows, like SpongeBob SquarePants and Invader Zim. I don’t think I’ve ever watched a full episode of either one. Then again, they didn’t come in through my antenna.
Honestly, the most time I’ve spent with such shows came from a Nickelodeon adult colouring book I had. I remember it had a penis on its cover.
Why am I talking about Nickelodeon? Well, I was recently tasked with playing through their interesting looking isometric action-RPG (well, ARPG), Nicktoons & the Dice of Destiny. It’s a colourful, Diablo style game that comes to us from Petit Fabrik and Fair Play Labs, the latter of which developed G.I. Joe: Operation Blackout, Color Guardians and Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2.
Things begin with a cartoon cutscene, in which Timmy Turner from The Fairly Oddparents makes an unwise wish while playing a tabletop role-playing game with his fairy godparents. You see, after getting bored of winning every time, he asks to play a real-life version of Dungeons and Dragons, except it’s obviously not called that. This leads to chaos, as magic dice grant said wish, sending Timmy, his fairy godparents and other Nicktoons characters into a fantastical quest.
The result of said premise is an adventure in which one must traverse through themed worlds in order to find and rescue the magical dice, which have (appropriately and unsurprisingly) gone missing. Along the way, you’ll explore familiar locales like a fantasy inspired version of Bikini Bottom, the Fire Nation and that one location that finds its way into most games: a dangerous forest, albeit a cotton candy/fairy inspired one. As you venture through these monster filled lands, you’ll also meet, join up with or do battle against some familiar faces, including a boss battle against Angelica and her doll, which is turned into a monstrous spider.
Being that Nicktoons & the Dice of Destiny is a Diablo-like ARPG, albeit one for younger audiences, you can expect that style of gameplay. Each of the several heroes (SpongeBob, Leonardo from TMNT, Sandy Cheeks, and more) that you can choose from at the beginning have their own special weapons (katanas, a spatula, etc.) and attacks, which can be unlocked by leveling up. You can bind these special abilities to face buttons and triggers.
The core gameplay relies on hacking and slashing enemies with a base attack, breaking barrels, opening chests and destroying blockades. You’ll find tons of gold, weapons and armour by doing this, and can either equip, break down, upgrade or sell it all. There are also talismans to find and equip, which provide attribute boosts like faster movement, increased defence, higher critical attack chance, improved strength and the like.
Then, there are the potions. There are always potions, aren’t there? The red ones refill your health, but others provide different types of helpful boosts. You can upgrade some of these, and even buy some, but why would you when the game gives you so many?
Over time, you’ll unlock different playable heroes, and can change to a different character in the Tangle. This is your hub, which becomes more populated as you progress. New characters come to open up shops, give you fetch based side quests, and spew dialogue, some of which is funny. You’ll collect chum, find underpants, collect comic books, pick up potion ingredients and more.
Each region you’ll explore culminates in a boss battle, including the aforementioned one against Angelica which is only the second or third one. The problem is that, up until this battle, the game is very easy. Then, you’re tasked with fighting this giant spider that almost never stops attacking and can only be hurt by hitting its head. Guess where most of the attacks come from?
Given that this is Nicktoons & the Dice of Destiny, it’s very surprising that there’s such a spike in difficulty, from super easy to Dark Souls if you will. It’s not the only one either.
Since this is basically a level based experience, as opposed to an open world type of thing, you’re able to choose the difficulty for each one. There are three options, and they are shown by suggesting which level you should be. I was cruising along easily in the middle, and had even completed a stage on hard, but then Angelica happened. I dropped the difficulty down, then she still kicked my ass. It didn’t help that, after using all of my health potions and dying, the game didn’t replenish them when I pressed restart and reappeared outside of Angelica’s cave. Also, unlike other bosses, there wasn’t a buffet of health positioned outside of her battle. In order to replenish my health potions, I had to go back to the hub, making me lose my progress. Thankfully, the stages are short, like the game in general. It’s six or seven hours long.
It’s important to note that some side quests send you back to previously explored stages, and task you with fighting bosses a second time. However, this time around, it’s the shadow versions of those baddies. When I was tasked with fighting Shadow Angelica, I was kind of scared. However, she was much easier than before.
I should also mention that I played as Leonardo, because playing as a samurai sounded interesting. I normally play as a warrior, or a brute, but decided that Leo sounded better than those classes that were assigned to SpongeBob and his female friend. Then again, I grew up with the classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon and movies. I stuck with him because the game rewards you for levelling up one character to max level, but I may have jinxed that my quickly switching to SpongeBob in the Tangle. I had a brain fart.
I liked Leo, and his abilities. He could hack and slash with the best of them, although using a very limited move set. Then, his abilities included a powerful kick, a sharp spin attack and the ability to enter into a zen state of mind and shoot ranged swords at foes, kind of like a fully healed Link in A Link to the Past. I didn’t unlock the kick or zen state of mind until late, though, because I had to be levels 13 and 16, if I recall correctly.
Of course, the game isn’t only melee based. There are characters who fall into more magical, ranged, categories. I’m just not someone who likes to use a mage, a rogue or anything non-melee in these types of games.
If you’re a fan of Nickelodeon and its colourful shows, you’ll appreciate the abundance of familiar characters, the well written dialogue, and the voice acting. I think that at least some of the voice actors from the shows handled their characters here, but am unsure.
That said, Nicktoons & the Dice of Destiny is a tad too short, basic and repetitive for its own good. It’s fun, but it could be much more. Furthermore, its odd and wild difficulty spikes may alienate its core audience. Then again, maybe this is targeted more to the 20 and 30 somethings who grew up with some of these shows, as opposed to their current audiences.
Visually, this is a very fitting and apt romp through cartoon worlds. It looks as you’d expect, with a mostly top down camera angle to boot, and features some well done cartoon cutscenes. However, the playable character sprites look a bit weird when the camera zooms in. Maybe it’s because they always seem to be moving, but they look a tad fuzzy and lower resolution than the environments or supporting cast. There also happens to be a slight dearth of enemy variety, meaning you’ll fight similar monsters over and over again.
As mentioned above, the audio is good. Well, I said that the voice acting is. The music is also fitting and fine, and it does a good job of making you feel like you’re in the Nickelodeon world. That said, I got a little sick of it and decided to listen to Spotify for a bit.
Nicktoons & the Dice of Destiny is a fun game, and it becomes both immersive and slightly addicting. However, it’s too short, repetitive and basic, and features shocking difficulty spikes that create frustrating choke points. I enjoyed my time with it, and liked it overall, but it left me wishing for more. It might have been a bit better if I’d played with friends, in local co-op, but I’m a solo gamer and had nobody to play with anyway.
This review is based on the Xbox Series S version of the game, which we were provided with.