This guest post is written by Robin Bea.
I’m halfway through serenading a sentient Venus flytrap with a cello when I can no longer avoid the conclusion that “Moves of the Diamond Hand” is one of the best RPGs I’ve ever played. The concert isn’t just for the benefit of the plant; it’s how I’m going to harvest tomatoes as part of my quest to make the perfect sandwich. The cello came from a dog-headed clone who I convinced to part with it partially by turning on its favorite TV channel while it slept, with the help of a particular brand of chewing gum.
My success or failure here will even influence who becomes the next mayor of Off-Peak City, and somehow, it all makes perfect sense in context, turning the dice rolls I’m making into one of the tensest RPG battles I’ve had in a long time.
“Moves of the Diamond Hand” is the latest game from developer Cosmo D, best known for the equally audacious indie hit “Betrayal at Club Low.” After being announced in 2025, “Moves of the Diamond Hand” hit Early Access on April 13, 2026, and it’s expected to be finished by early 2027. Even in its unfinished state, with two of five chapters implemented and about ten hours of gameplay in place, “Moves of the Diamond Hand” is an absolute marvel.
Things start out simply enough, with a short conversation on a train and a dice roll to fix the car’s broken door. Before leaving the train, you’re introduced to your main mission (joining the famous Circus X, a sure ticket to fame and fortune) and all the ways you could potentially reach it. Feats of physical, artistic, political, or even culinary skill are all on the table, each represented by one of the game’s seven main stats. There’s rarely just one path to solving a problem in “Moves of the Diamond Hand.” Even in escaping the train, you can choose between multiple routes ranging from hacking the car’s computer to buttering up the train conductor and getting him to tell you its password.
Everything in the game comes down to a dice roll and every way of powering up your character is about manipulating what shows up on the dice. By default, you roll a single die tied to one of your skills for each check, testing it against a die rolled by your opponent. Win or lose, you gain experience points, which you can use to increase the numbers on your dice, a single side at a time. That constant progression means you’re always getting just a tiny bit better at your chosen skills, but the real magic of “Moves of the Diamond Hand’s” dice system is its modifiers.
Exiting the train car, you step into a puddle of spilled boba tea. Pass a check to avoid slipping, and you’ll gain a new die that adds bonuses to your next roll, but fail, and you’ll get a die that subtracts from it instead. Either way, the new die disappears after it’s used once. It’s a simple way of changing the stakes of each roll based on how your story has gone so far, and “Moves of the Diamond Hand” weaves magic out of this simple mechanic. Nearly everything you do has an effect on what comes next, from digging through the garbage to listening to the radio. You can even stack multiple of these positive or negative dice, collecting bonuses to prepare for an especially tough skill check or digging yourself a hole with multiple failures, ending up with half a dozen dice adding different effects to a single roll.
Dice rolls are ultimately tests of luck, but “Moves of the Diamond Hand” turns them into tests of preparation and perseverance instead. Before long, you’ll start running into checks that are impossible without some fiddling, and it’s up to you to figure out how to make them possible by tracking down modifiers, single-use items, and disguises that add unique effects. You also get two free rerolls on every check, and learning how to use them properly makes rolling a hand of dice feel far more active and intense than it has any right to be.
A game built on finding ways to squeeze one more number onto a dice roll might sound dry, but “Moves of the Diamond Hand” is instead dripping with style. An absurdist sense of humor permeates the entire game, and its setting of Off-Peak City is one of the wildest places I’ve ever visited in a game. Here, clones and former boy band members vie for the mayorship and the library guards its premises with genetically engineered lions.
The game’s writing is sharp and strange — every interaction laced with dry wit and narrative surprises. Its soundtrack is propulsive, mixing electronic and jazz influences into a soundtrack like nothing you’ll find in other games. Mechanically, it’s just as daring, with dice-based challenges for making pizza and sewing new clothes, among other things. How many games have you played with a custom laundry mini-game, let alone two?
Plenty of video games have tried to capture the magic of tabletop roleplaying games, and few have done it half as well as “Moves of the Diamond Hand.” Rolling dice is the core of most TTRPGs, but it’s not really the numbers that matter — it’s what they mean. The outcome of a dice roll isn’t just about getting a higher result than your opponent. It’s how your abilities let you get results that would be impossible by luck alone and how every roll tells the story of what you did to scrape for whatever advantage you could find to get there.
“Moves of the Diamond Hand” is a game about joining the circus, and the more I play, the more it feels like a stunning high-wire act itself. Its surreal story only gets stranger the longer it goes on, but it never tips over into being too difficult to follow. More complex rules are constantly being added to its dice-rolling mechanics, but they all link together in satisfying and approachable ways.
The world looks like it’s cobbled together from a dozen different art styles, but sometimes it remains cohesive the whole way through. Every time it seems like the daring “Moves of the Diamond Hand” might be setting itself up for a fall, it instead soars to greater heights, leaving me rapt to see what it could pull off next. The game is coming soon to early access and you can check out the Steam page here if you want to wishlist… Which you should, quite frankly.
Image credit: “Moves of the Diamond Hand”
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