Roll the dice to choose how you will die! 

Indie studio Ao Norte announces its new game Die or Die, coming soon to Steam Early Access

Lil' Demon is tired of his life in Big Dork City, and he wants to leave his life behind and start anew. Life, though, has other plans. And Lil' Demon knows only one way to stand against the bummers that life throws at him: total destruction and chaos (he is a demon, after all!) 

Indie studio Ao Norte announces its new game, Die or Die, coming to Steam Early Access soon – a top-down roguelite shooter with dice management elements. In Die or Die, luck is as important as skill. Before every level, you roll a bunch of dice, and you have to decide what to do with their results in the Planning Phase. 

You can use them to get rid of Bummers – specific handicaps that make levels incrementally harder in a specific way, like bigger or stronger enemies, or particularly crazy things like inverted controls. So you can make your life easier by destroying Bummers such as friendly fire, explosive bullets, an invisible HUD, or meteor rains. Or enemies who sing off pitch at the top of their lungs. Or maybe the floor is lava now, or an overexcited fan is chasing you and attracting all monsters with her screams. Look, Big Dork City is a strange place, alright? 

You can also use your dice results to buy new weapons or gear, and level up your skills, becoming more and more powerful as the run progresses. Some perks are quite straightforward, like getting bigger and meaner weapons that affect huge areas. Imagine wielding a ginormous yo-yo or a stupidly big frying pan in battle. Other new abilities, well – you can set your enemies on fire when you hit them, turn into a vengeful ghost upon death or get a line of conjoined twins, all equally armed to the teeth. Whatever it takes to escape Big Dork City! 

And then, after you've decided what to do with all your dice... you jump right into the fight – and you die. A lot. But every time you'll unlock new weapons and abilities until you eventually clear your way to the coast through 5 different worlds full of enemies and hazards.  Good luck out there, Lil' Demon, you're gonna need it... 

KEY FEATURES

• A unique twist to the roguelite genre: you choose the dangers you will face

• 5 worlds each with a different settings, with procedurally generated levels

• A mix of shooting and strategy: balance improving your build and getting rid of bummers 

• Huge replayability: on top of having lots of bummers, skills, and weapons, luck makes every playthrough unique 

• A colorful cartoonish art style with over-the-top crazy, absurd humor, inspired by cartoons from the 90s such as Ren & Stimpy or Cow and Chicken

 

ABOUT AO NORTE

Ao Norte was founded in 2022 by Rubén Calles and Diego Freire, after more than 8 years in the videogame industry. As a team of 5 persons, they are trying to create a game dev community in the north of Spain, a country with few game studios and little community. They released their first game, Tiny Garden, in 2025. They're an LGTBQ+ friendly studio and love to spend time watching wrestling, growing tomatoes, and playing Gartic Phone.