PNP Friday for March 27, 2026 - What I love About Dice Horde. Plus PNP news.
Jason plays the no-cut-needed tower defense game. Plus all the new print and play games you may have missed.
Welcome to Print & Play Friday! It’s March 27th and we’ve got a fresh batch of print and play news and games for your reading (and playing) pleasure.
Table of Contents
Main Feature: What I Love About Dice Horde
New Games This Week
Community Spotlight: How to Make Print & Play Game Counters
Crowdfunding News (PNP Previews & Campaigns)
Where Are They Now?
What I Love About Dice Horde
JASON GREENO // MARCH 27, 2026
Have you seen Dice Horde? I feel like it was advertised on Facebook quite a bit. For whatever reason I never took a close look during the campaign but I knew I wanted to jump back and try it at some point. Partially because it has great art and graphic design, and partially because I love to see how different designers handle challenges that I’ve faced in my games (Battle Pages was the tower defense game that I worked on and its neat to see a different spin on that model).
From the Publisher:
Dice Horde, is a solo tower defense roll-and-write where you lead the charge against a wild incursion of dice-headed beasts bursting through fresh rifts to crash your last bastion!
Each round starts with a dice roll that sets the horde’s march: those cube-headed critters pushing forward like they’re late for a raid. The same roll hands you your defenses – quick battlements, quirky ward-towers, and gadgets thrown together by frantic engineers – all to keep the tide from flooding your stronghold.
Art and Graphic Design
Right out of the gate this one looks impressive. With so much iconography and elements to portray there was a lot of risk that the final sheet would feel cluttered and incomprehensible. The exact opposite is true here. Sure there’s a lot to learn in this game but the visuals don’t get in the way of that. Moreover they help teach you the game with visual reminders that have been honed and well-considered.
Surprising Depth
I’ve designed my fair share of 1-2 page games, where most of the game’s mechanics need to ‘fit’ on the page. This naturally drives the design to simplify and (hopefully) innovate so that the fun doesn’t get squeezed out. With Dice Horde I can confidently say that designers Przemysław Fornal and Michał Łopato have protected the fun while keeping the scope creep monsters at bay.
Hidden within the small army boxes, that define each of the three enemy dice types, is an elegant system of movement, attack, and special abilities. Like a well-oiled machine the game sets up each turn with new tactical challenges. These threats keep you on your toes making the player’s choices more challenging and rewarding. Do you upgrade your traps and barricades or your tower’s attacks? Do you spend your resources on spell scrolls or on your kingdom’s infrastructure? Each game you can explore a different path which of course is the sign of a great game.
Challenging Game
I’m by no means a tactical genius, but I’ve played a good deal of resource optimization games and I can say that Dice Horde does a great job of taxing your brain (in a good way). Since the action system uses a randomized order and the position of the enemies is always different, you’ll likely never face the same situation twice. Just the demo alone provides a ton of fun, but I’m looking forward to trying the full game when it release towards the end of March / start of April.
Watch the tutorial video
This helped me learn the game’s nuances. Highly recommend.
Check out the free demo of Dice Horde.
It looks like the full game is almost complete. We’ll report back in a future substack article when we see it released to the general public.
I’d love to hear what you think of the game (and maybe some strategy tips to save my towers) at our Discord channel.
Games featured in these posts are not sponsored.
Each week we share the new releases in the world of Print and Play. Here’s what’s new this week.
The Rise Of A Jarl: Button Shy is back with another low color PNP preview for their Spring Wallet Games in Boxes campaign, and this time it’s The Rise Of A Jarl from everyone’s favorite massive game in a tiny box designer, Joe Klipfel. Steer the course of your Viking civilization through trade, raiding, and technology in this solo 18-card engine builder. Itch.io Link. The Game Crafter Link.
The Battle for Leybar Bridge: Use your dice wisely to defend against waves of enemies in this dice manipulation and placement puzzle for 1 player. Take the role of Sgt. Henri Brunier and his garrison of 13 soldiers as they hold their outpost against the thousand-strong Trarza army. Can you repeat history and stop the Trarza army from reaching Saint-Louis? Link.
Dungeon Pages: Underboss - Shade King: The year-long set has been updated with the newest boss and dungeon. A Shade King is only as good as his subjects. Luckily you’ve got an army of spirits and shades to command. Link.
Battle Pages - Kingdom of Gallisen Marching Order 1: This is it folks! The last kingdom in the year-long Battle Pages series. The Demon Lord has arrived and its up to you to field an army that can repel the evil forces. Each month introduces a new sheet, but each week changes up the enemy’s marching order to push you to try out new strategies. Link.
Publishers / designers submit your new PNP releases here: PNP Arcade Submission Form.
How to Make Print & Play Game Chipboard Counters
Looking to upgrade your print and play components? Check out this excellent tutorial from Eric’s Table on how to make old school chipboard counters.
Here are a few PNP-related crowdfunding campaigns that we thought you might find interesting:
Galen’s Games Mint Tin Series 2
Want a whole bunch of tiny games at once? Here’s a series of 1-2 player games that fit inside a mint tin. This campaign includes a PNP level for Kickabout, Mint Mechs, Hard Drive, and That’s An Order, all for just $8. Most can be learned in about 5 minutes, and played in 15-20 minutes! Link.
The Copins
Looking for a decently sized PNP project for $6? This one has a board, 100+ cards, tokens and more. In The Copins you will create card combos to score movement points to advance along the board track, but hold on! In each turn, players may attempt to block, prevent others from moving forward, force them to travel backward, and steal their cards, among other actions. All of these, while they try to escape from an adorable cute kitty! Link.
Submit your PNP crowdfunding projects here:
PNP Arcade Submission Form.
Are you looking for your favorite publishers from PNP Arcade? Check out this list.
Alexander Shen: If you’ve never played Quests Over Coffee or any of Alexander’s other fun games, be sure to check out his stuff on Itch.io. Link.
Button Shy Games: With hundreds of games on PNP Button Shy started uploading games on Itch.io and The Game Crafter. Expect regular releases of the older library of games as well as new content to come. Itch.io Link. The Game Crafter Link.
Cezar Capacle: Brazilian game designer, graphic designer, architect and musician. He’s been creating unique games for the past five years, on a variety of genres. Link
Clearly Sharp: Home page for Daniel Young, the designer of Gem Getter and Forest Floor. Link
Daws of Darkness: The Lost Village and its mini-expansion are now available at itch.io. The thick line art style of these co-op games really makes them stand out. Link
Epic Endeavor Games (Jason Greeno): The independent games by JG can be found on his Patreon page. Link.
Grimscribe: If you are looking for the year-long Grimlore series, you can find those here. Publisher Website. PNP Stash.
Jack Neal Games: Jack’s games about power, value, and systems (Rust and Revenue and Charters: Profit Through Public Works) are now available at JackNealGames.com. Link.
Kealf Games: The new location for all things from Kelvin Soong of Kealf Games. PNP Stash Link.
Mark Tuck: Mark has brought his collection of PNPs (from the beloved Orchard to Pocket Aquarium, and many more) to the Game Crafter. Link.
PNP Arcade Publishing: For everything Dungeon Pages (and more to come) check out the PNP Arcade page at Itch.io. Link
Shiny Pigeon Games: PNP Arcade previously hosted Around The World In 15 Minutes, but at their site you can pick up Starfront Scouting Academy and the Packing Party series of games. Link.
We Heart Games: The Itch store for Mike Berg’s games (Crownfell, Exobase, Exoship) has the entire catalog of games. Link.
Would you like to submit a PNP Game?
With the help of publishers, designers and the community we will continue to share PNPs with all of you.
Click this link to submit information about a game
Don’t miss the weekly print and play games and news.
Games featured in these posts are not sponsored.