Every roguelike runs on luck: the bad room, the useless drop, the run lost before it started. Die or Die, the new top-down shooter from Galician studio Ao Norte, drags that luck out of the background and hands it to you as currency. Each die you earn is a decision about how you would like to suffer, and the whole design hangs on that single idea.

The pitch borrows two famous reference points: the grubby, scribbled cartoon mood of Nickelodeon’s Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, fed through the frantic top-down violence of Hotline Miami. You play Lil’ Demon, a burned-out taxi driver who is tired of the city, tired of his job, tired of everything, and who just wants to reach the coast. Each level is cleared by running, shooting and dodging until nothing is left standing, and the reward is a handful of dice.

Die or Die dice board where players spend dice on powers, weapons or on clearing bummers — Image: Ao Norte / Acclaim

What you do with those dice is where Die or Die stops being a pure reflex test. They buy abilities and super weapons, but they are also the only way to remove “bummers”, the modifiers piled on after every cleared level: enemies that suddenly turn huge, a floor of lava, a meteor shower, movement at half speed. The Steam page lists stranger ones, from speech bubbles blocking the view to a world flipped upside down or a level squeezed through grandpa’s old television. Any bummer you ignore carries over to the next stage. Spend on power and the world gets worse; spend on mercy and you arrive underarmed. The studio’s shorthand is a three-beat mantra: roll, die, repeat.

A city level of Die or Die played through an old CRT television filter, one of the game’s bummer modifiers — Image: Ao Norte / Acclaim

The publisher is part of the story too. Acclaim, the name once stamped on Mortal Kombat, Turok and NBA Jam, went under in 2004 and was revived in 2025 as a label for independent studios. “Growing up, shows like Aaahh!!! Real Monsters and Liquid Television had a wild, weird, unapologetic energy you couldn’t find anywhere else,” Marc Anthony Rodriguez, Acclaim’s director of publishing and strategic partnerships, said in the announcement, calling the game a perfect fit for a company that wants “games with attitude, personality, and immediate fun.” Rubén Calles, producer and art director at Ao Norte, framed the deal as the push the small team needed.

The scope is generous for a compact game: five worlds, more than 20 weapons to unlock and upgrade, over 60 powers and more than 70 bummers, plus 20 optional challenges, signed as contracts, that pay out extra dice if you survive them. Runs start from scratch, though each one unlocks new weapons, abilities and, mischievously, new bummers for later attempts. Global leaderboards track the highest bounty.

Die or Die made its playable debut at L.A. Comic Con last week, and Acclaim will release it on Steam and consoles in 2027; the specific consoles have not been named yet. The Steam page lists Windows, Mac and Linux versions and support for 11 languages, including Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese and both Chinese scripts.

It is a small game with a cartoon devil at the wheel, but the bet is precise: that a roguelike’s randomness becomes more interesting once the player is the one rolling, and paying, for it. As the Steam page puts it, every death is your fault.

Tags: indie games, roguelike games, Acclaim, Ao Norte, Die or Die, Hotline Miami

Die or Die, a Hotline Miami-style roguelike built on dice, is the revived Acclaim’s next bet

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