You can play any game with a die now. No, seriously. Dugout Dice has gone and done it to baseball, a sport that was mostly numbers to begin with.

It’s out now on iOS, and every swing is a roll. You need to beat a target score before you hit three outs to get through each inning, then win enough games to make the playoffs and, eventually, a championship. Fall short at any point, and that’s your season done.

You’re also putting a lineup together at the same time. Your batters come with abilities that stick with you for the whole season, and you can pile Superfan Boosts, dice upgrades and one-time items on top of them to turn a modest single into a much bigger payoff. 

Bench management comes into it as well, which I didn’t expect from something built on dice. Pitchers and boss closers will keep springing up to make a mess of whatever combination you thought was working.

And if all of this feels familiar, Balatro is the reason. Score targets, stacking multipliers, consumables and a run that ends the moment you fall short have become a template on phones, and plenty of what’s followed has copied the surface without the bit that made it click.

I do believe that baseball might suit this structure a little more than most themes I’ve seen, though. Innings, outs and a season already give the run a shape you understand, so you’re only learning the scoring, not the sport and the scoring at once.

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