About Carve the Fate

Carve the Fate is a 1-bit Norse dice-builder roguelike that plays in your browser. It is designed and built by Jamie Bartlett.

The idea

The game starts from a simple question: what if a roguelike's deck of cards were a bag of dice? Yahtzee gives you the tension of locking what you like and gambling on the rest. Balatro shows how satisfying it is to discover synergies that break a game open. Slay the Spire gives a run its shape — a branching map, a boss at the end, a build that grows as you go. Carve the Fate blends the three, and wraps them in a stark Norse underworld of runes, ravens and barrow-dead.

The experience

A run should feel like carving your own luck. Every turn is a short puzzle — which dice to lock, whether to risk a reroll, which ritual to commit to — and every reward is a choice that points your bag in a direction. The game is built for short sessions on a phone, but a full descent through 4 depths has room for real planning.

What is in it

Today the game has 4 bloodlines, 29 rituals, 13 dice, 18 runes, 20 relics and 51 enemies across 4 depths, plus a daily challenge and head-to-head duels on the web version. The game guide lists everything, and the updates page records how it has grown.

How it is built

The game is a web app written in TypeScript with React, Vite and Zustand. Its rules engine is deterministic: a run is fully defined by its seed and the choices made, which is how the Daily Descent can give everyone the same dungeon. All of the game's content — dice, rituals, enemies, balance numbers — lives in data files rather than code, which is also how this website's guide pages stay accurate. The mobile apps are wrapped with Capacitor.

Where to play

Play free in your browser on phone, tablet or desktop at the play page. You can install it to your home screen or desktop like an app — see the FAQ. It is part of the Zonto game platform, whose optional account adds cloud saves and achievements.

Credits

Design and code: Jamie Bartlett. Music from Pixabay and WarbringerGhesh; sound effects by Yodguard, DRAGON-STUDIO, David Dumais, freesound_community, Universfield and others, and a dice-roll recording from OpenGameArt (CC0). The in-game Credits screen has the complete list.

Get in touch

Questions, bug reports and feedback are welcome — see the contact page.