Nicktoons & The Dice of Destiny Review – Review

Nostalgia reigns supreme in Nicktoons and the Dice of Destiny, the new kid’s first dungeon crawler from Fair Play Labs (who did the solid Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl games) and Petit Fabrik. It’s part of the publisher Game Mill’s ongoing campaign to capture the magic of 30 some-odd years of Nickelodeon cartoons and make them into video games. Dice of Destiny is a cute tabletop RPG-inspired adventure where you take control of a number of Nicktoons through fantasy-tinged versions of their settings.

The spread of characters hits a decent amount of ground, as the nine playable characters are from eight different cartoons and a variety of eras. Timmy Turner from the Fairly Oddparents is the driving force of the narrative as his tabletop RPG experiences with his titular oddparents is the cause for the weird fantasy world everyone is wrapped up in. Timmy is aptly a Wizard class and initially is one of five characters available at the outset, with Spongebob, Sandy Cheeks, Leonardo (TMNT), and Katara (Avatar). They’re all mapped to different classes with unique powers and abilities. I played a lot of Leonardo of the sword-slashing Samurai class and in multiplayer with my kids, we dipped into a mix of Katara’s healing abilities and Sandy’s barbarian tendencies. Four more characters are unlocked as you progress. I’ve come to learn they’re just announced and out in the wild, but I played through this game not knowing who exactly the other characters were and I thought it was cooler that way so aside from saying the characters are cool and the classes add a decent amount of variety, I’ll refrain from saying anymore. Except one of them has a giant Reptar tied to their special abilities.

Romping through this as an adult in single-player is largely simplistic yet still enjoyable. While it’s easy to up the difficulty a little bit, the game isn’t all that complex or challenging. It’s a lot of button-mashing and dodging while deploying special attacks every now and then. The loot isn’t vast or all that deep, but it’s clear Diablo served as some degree of inspiration on this game. It’s amusing across the different warped Nickelodeon worlds.

The magic of this game was playing it in multiplayer with my kids. Supporting up to four players locally, it’s easy to drop in and out and thanks to the gentler difficulty, it wasn’t frustrating to play with a 7-year-old and a 4-year-old. The classes complement each other well, especially when you blend magic users and melee-focused characters. And even if my kids really only know Spongebob and TMNT from the playable characters, the personality of every character shines through even if you’re unfamiliar, thanks to the large amount of voiceover work. You can tell a lot was learned from Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl because this game tries very hard to make characters fun and memorable even if you don’t know the ins and outs of their source material. My kids walked away wanting to learn more about characters.

I’d imagine a lot of people going to this with ‘90s or ‘00s Nick nostalgia in their eyes could leave a little disappointed due to the overall simplicity, but this is an action RPG for the younger sect. More specifically, it’s an action RPG for adults with said nostalgia (and maybe some love for Diablo-esque games) to play with their children. It’s a serviceable dungeon crawler with a lot of love for the Nicktoons involved that is super cute and playful.