Beneath The Six - Combat Test

What is dNo?

dNumber (or 'dNo' for short) is a hobby universe centered around beautiful, playful, collectible digital items – dice, figures, tiles and stories. Around these digital items we’re building games, working with our community to nurture a brand new hobby together.

dNo can be thought of as akin to a hobby like Warhammer or Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) – but is entirely digital. When someone walks into a Warhammer/Games Workshop store, they are greeted with all the ingredients of a multifaceted and sophisticated hobby. There are the games – rulebooks and boards, collectible dice, miniature figures along with paints to decorate them, campaign manuals which detail the game worlds and the stories that take place therein. Importantly, these stores nurture communities, running game nights where people get together to play. A game like D&D appeals to different people in different ways – from the detail-oriented fan who loves to learn every statistic in the game, the creative type who likes to decorate figures, the dungeon master who creates and narrates the worlds and stories people play through, and those who primarily enjoy the social and role-playing aspects of the game.

That’s what we’re building – a hobby, based around digital collectibles, games to play with them and a community of players and creators.

Players use collectible, digital dNo dice – like the ones you’d play D&D with. There are free sets but players can buy others, which are made of different (virtual) materials, have different carvings, fonts, items inside and behaviours.

These dice can be used to generate characters – players will drag different dice into the dNo Character Creator, and new characters are generated taking on the characteristics of the dice. Drag in a set of wizard dice and you’ll create a magical character. Add in some warrior dice and you might improve their fighting skills, physical strength or replace that magic wand with a sword. Add in some rogue dice for stealth, and you’ve created yourself a unique new hero!

The dice and characters, along with what we call "tiles" and "worlds" (which are built from the hexagonal tiles) form the foundation of the dNo universe. On these foundations we are building a whole hobby ecosystem – with games and apps not just developed by us but also by any members of our community who’d like to get involved in making something new and exciting.

The first game we are building is called "Beneath The Six."

What is "Beneath The Six?"

Beneath The Six is a turn-based roguelike game (when we say "roguelike’" we mean literally "like Rogue" the classic turn based game dating right back to 1980 . "Roguelike" has come to mean lots of other things since, but our game owes its inspiration back to that original).

Beneath The Six is a mixture of exploration, combat and storytelling. Players create a character using their dNo dice and descend, either alone or with friends, into dungeons filled with treasure, traps and monsters. Every day, a new dungeon will be generated for players to explore. The player that gets the deepest into the dungeon will be that day’s winner, taking pole position on our Discord channel’s leaderboard.

Players are encouraged to experiment with different characters – made from different combinations of dNo dice. Characters come with their own skills, abilities and equipment. A character that’s great in one situation might not be the ideal choice for another. One dungeon might benefit from pure physical strength and fighting ability, another from magic prowess and another from the stealthy skills of a rogue character. Players might choose to enter the dungeons together, sharing the risks and rewards, perhaps choosing to play as characters with complementary skills.

When will Beneath The Six launch?

We're hoping to launch the first official version of Beneath The Six in 2024.

In the meantime, we plan to launch test versions of different aspects of the game, to a small audience invited from our player community (mostly centered around our Discord server↗ (Opens in new tab)). The first of these tests is what we're calling the 'Combat Test' - just a simple test of our single-player combat mechanics.

What is the Combat Test?

We want as much feedback from players as we can as we develop our games. So, we're releasing a 'Combat Test' in October 2023.

The Combat Test isn't an early access, or an alpha version - it's much earlier than that.

If Beneath The Six mixes role-playing, exploration, story and combat, the Combat Test is really just focused on combat. Players will be dropped into the Arena - a small dungeon filled with monsters. Defeat those monsters and a portal will open up, giving access to the next level. The players that get the furthest each day will top our Discord leaderboard.

Each day, the Combat Test will feature a brand new dungeon to explore.

We want to see what players do and don't like about the combat experience, and also to see how people choose to play with the different characters on offer.

In the full game, you'll be able to create your own characters by combining different dNo dice in our character creator. For the combat test, we're just providing a few different characters for you to experiment with.

What's the difference between the combat test and the full game?

The Combat Test really represents just a very small piece of Beneath The Six.

The full game will feature huge dungeons to explore - a new one every day, with more monsters to discover, weapons to master, spells to cast and stories to enjoy.

It will have multiplayer and single player modes, an 'overworld' (we're keeping this a secret for now) and much more.

Is the Combat Test Free?

Yes, the combat test is completely free.

Are there any in-app purchases?

No, there are no in-app purchases at all in the Combat Test.