Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and Dice of Fate Gameplay Preview

Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and Dice of Fate is an old school roguelike originally released on the Nintendo DS way back in 2010 and later on the Vita in 2015/2016. It’s been re-released for the Nintendo Switch and PC and the game still holds up to this day.

As a roguelike, the game has a lot of mechanics to master and thankfully the game has an optional, built in tutorial going over each mechanic in depth. It took me roughly three hours to cover everything so you know the game has a lot to learn about. I would highly recommend going over the tutorials before venturing into the main dungeon, as some of the mechanics are not very obvious until someone explains it to you. For example, the game makes use of pots to both hold items, and upgrade them. You insert the required items and then break the pot to grab what’s inside. There are many more mechanics and it takes a lot of practice to use them successfully to survive and make it out alive.

The game also has encounters in which you can hire npcs to aid you in your journey up the tower. Each of them level up along with you and have different abilities. Tao the guide is incredibly helpful as she has a ranged attack that can soften up enemies for you to defeat once they are close enough. Okon can transform herself into monsters to fight, and as she levels up she can transform into even stronger monsters. There are more and some of them require you to complete some quests before they are accessible.

Overall, Shiren the Wanderer is still a solid roguelike adventure. It’s can be pretty difficult at first because of having so many mechanics to master like many other roguelikes. However, making it to the top of the tower is incredibly satisfying and motivates you to master the game.