Dice Have No Eyes, the Balatro-like from Arco’s developers, makes greed the real boss

Every gambling game is secretly about the moment you should have stopped. Dice Have No Eyes builds its whole design around that moment. Made by Franek and Max Cahill, two of the developers behind the Mesoamerican fantasy RPG Arco, it is a dice-rolling roguelike in the wake of Balatro, but where LocalThunk’s poker hit asks you to build the perfect hand, this one asks a meaner question: how much are you willing to lose for one more roll?

The loop is disarmingly simple. You roll a handful of dice and bank the points, or you keep rolling to double them, knowing that every throw also carries the risk of going bust and losing the lot. Between levels you improve and swap your dice, feed them snacks, and collect trinkets and spells that bend the rules; the pleasure lies in finding the broken synergies before the dice turn on you. The store page sums up the arc of a run in a little monologue that slides from “You’re smart” to “You’re a genius” to “You’re stupid” in the space of a few throws.

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What sets it apart in the crowded field of Balatro-likes is its tone. The boards float in pastel clouds, the cast includes a crowned figure called King Fetus and a dog companion, and the randomness is credited, with a straight face, to a “God n’ Fate engine”. The dice, as the title promises, have no eyes whatsoever. Beneath the jokes sits a real idea: luck is treated as something close to faith, and each run as a dream you may or may not wake up from.

The game has been in Early Access on Steam since May, and the 1.0 launch update arriving on November 20 is the one that finally gives it an ending. In the announcement, the developers promise “the big finale”, with a question mark over whether you actually meet God, alongside new characters, items and babies, new boards, character endings, extra customization options and a Rift Level that, in their words, “goes on and on”.

The update also adds music cassettes that players can collect to build an in-game playlist, Steam achievements and leaderboards, more languages and a long list of quality-of-life changes, including reworked controls. The game is a Windows PC release on Steam, where the Early Access version is on sale now and a free demo is available.

For Franek and Cahill, a duo working between Poland and Australia, it is a sharp turn from Arco, the tactical adventure that Panic published in 2024. Arco told its story across a long journey through a Mesoamerican-inspired world; Dice Have No Eyes compresses consequence into a single press of the roll button. Next time will be different, the game whispers. It rarely is.

Tags: roguelikes, Balatro, Future Friends Games, Arco, Dice Have No Eyes, Max Cahill

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