Warrior vs Cactus: Sword, Spiked Shield and a Combat Roll

About this game

Developer: Terry Cavanagh · Publisher: Terry Cavanagh · Platform: PC (Steam) · Art style: Comic & cartoon · Screen type: Battle / Tactics

More Dicey Dungeons screens in the Gallery

What to study

This is the canonical Dicey Dungeons fight, and it shows why the game needs almost no HUD: the equipment cards are the moves, the dice at the bottom are the resource, and every rule is printed on the card that uses it. The three cards also teach the game's slot grammar in one glance, a plain slot takes any die and pays its face value as damage (Sword), a hatched MAX 5 slot caps what it accepts and splits its effect by parity (Spiked Shield: even dice attack, odd dice shield), and a grey utility card spends a die on a reroll instead of damage (Combat Roll, three uses this turn). Because the Warrior's three rolled dice (3, 2, 4) sit visibly unspent below the cards, the player's whole decision, which die goes in which slot, and what to reroll, can be read off a single still frame. Frame at about 0:02 in the Launch Trailer (Steam; manual extraction from the 2 fps probe pass over the window 1.5–4s).

Patterns

How the screen is arranged.

dice-check status-row

Components

Parts on screen.

Card Vitals bar Slots Action bar Dice

Screen inventory

• three equipment cards fill the centre of the screen and nothing else competes with them: a red SWORD with one empty dashed dice slot ('Do [dice] damage'), a red SPIKED SHIELD whose hatched slot reads MAX 5 ('Even: [dice] damage / Odd: [dice] shield'), and a grey COMBAT ROLL ('Reroll a dice (3 uses this turn)'), attack equipment is red, the utility reroll is grey
• the rolled dice are literal white dice resting along the bottom centre of the board, a 3, a 2 and a 4 in this frame, matching the 'x3' dice counter beside the Warrior's name; a die is spent by dragging it onto a card's dashed slot, so the slot outline is the whole interaction language
• the combatants live in opposite corners as dice characters: the blue Warrior die bottom-left with a red 26/32 health bar and a yellow FURY bar under it, the Cactus top-right at 34/34 with its own 'x4' counter, the enemy's dice pool is published on its health bar before it acts
• there is no hand, deck, mana row or action bar anywhere: three cards, three dice and two health bars are the complete combat interface

Top 3 colors

#161c1d 41%#543434 19%#5c5753 17%

Top three palette colors by share. The remaining colors make up the rest.

Source and credit

© Terry Cavanagh, Dicey Dungeons screenshot: Steam trailers (Reunion Trailer / Launch Trailer), Terry Cavanagh, shown for design study and commentary. PlayCraft is an unofficial fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Terry Cavanagh.

Source tier 2 (publisher-released) · screenshot: Steam store page · Steam page

Source details

Fetched 2026-10-25. verified 2026-10-25: manual extraction manual-warrior-cactus-2.png @ ~2s in the Launch trailer, MD5 ea45960dbdf39d050e79301cff32d4e6, from the verified-clean curl-shim download (34,541,748 B, MD5 9e621dedbe6980a5967780f6c4897a7d; full decode to null exit 0, zero error lines, decode-steam-861540-Launch-Trailer.mp4.err), inspected visually at full resolution (1920x1080 native); the SWORD, SPIKED SHIELD (MAX 5, Even/Odd lines) and COMBAT ROLL cards, the 3/2/4 dice, Warrior 26/32 + FURY and Cactus 34/34 + x4 all legible; no trailer text or marketing overlay in frame

no published policy found (checked 2026-10-25); fair-use study use, takedown honored within 48h

Rights holders: see Copyright & takedown.