In Moves of the Diamond Hand, donning the perfect disguise can be just as powerful as rolling the right dice. If you’ve played the demo, you’ve already encountered disguises. In the full game, they’re woven into the core gameplay—how you find them, keep them intact, and eventually rework them into stronger forms.

Where it happens.

It starts simple: a musician’s tuxedo, a chef’s outfit, a business suit, a unitard, a tracksuit. Each comes with its own unique dice, escalating in power as the player progresses. Every disguise ties back to the skills you’ve invested in, so your wardrobe becomes another reflection of your build. Certain disguises can only be worn when you’re powerful enough to wear them, giving you an incentive to really define who you want to be in the game.

Prototype UI of the washing system.

One feature missing from the demo, but definitely part of Early Access, is laundry. Disguises get grimy with use, and the only way to restore them is at a washing station or machine—with detergent, which is also represented by dice. When you wash a disguise, you enter a dice check where the item itself modifies the roll as “dirty laundry.” Win, and the whole costume is restored. Fail, and you can still clean up to three faces. It’s never a hard loss, just a “win big” or “win less.” Either way, the laundry always gets done.

Disguise recycling is another focus. Old disguises can be shredded for materials, but once again, the dice decide how much you recover. Win, and you salvage most of the parts. Lose, and you only get some.

Once you’ve collected enough materials—by finding them, buying them, or recycling—you can assemble more elaborate disguises using schematics hidden across the city. These schematics lay out color-and-number requirements on a dice grid, similar to building stained glass in the board game Sagrada. I’m drawn to that emergent puzzle of matching limited resources into patterns, and here it plays directly into the theme of cobbling together thematic disguises from improvised scraps.

In the end, the disguise system lets you maintain, break apart, and rebuild outfits into more powerful forms. It’s not a sprawling crafting tree, but a tight loop informed by some of the great board games I’ve played over the years—pattern matching, set collection, and dice-rolling shenanigans. The systems I’ve built around it are part of the texture of a world where a fuzzy corduroy sweater, held together with duct tape, could get you in the door when fists could not.

It calls to you...

I hope you enjoy this facet of the game!

One of the major additions to this game that’s new to my process is the idea of a “wandering agent” who roams around an area—like the classic Immersive Sim guard out of Thief or Dishonored.

As ever, I wanted to approach the wandering agent concept from a distinct angle. Sure, you could sneak up behind them and try to pick their pockets—all in the spirit of mischief. And my game leaves room for that. The agent has sight cones, patrol routes, and a sense that they can “catch” you. But there are aspects to this sort of encounter I’ve chosen which separate what I’m doing from my inspirations.

For starters, more confrontational physical aspects are already being handled by my dice system. If a guard catches you, you can try to wrestle, cajole, charm, or bribe—whatever makes thematic and situational sense. However, if you’re unable to convince the guard, you’ve effectively surrendered. Then what?

For one thing, an unsuccessful encounter like this doesn’t lead to a one-on-one fight to the last person standing. Basically, when you surrender, the guard “ejects” you from the area you're trying to roam in. It’s a “start back at the edge of the arena” situation. It still creates tension because when you get ejected, both you and the guard gain condition dice representing the outcome. It could be something obvious like “Injured” or “Embarrassed”—like if a bouncer tossed you out of a club. As before, you’ll need to roll dice to fully remove this condition.

So the risk remains, but you still get to choose whether to step back into the area where the wandering agent might find you again. Failure is never game over—but it can be if you have an appetite for more risk.

Another thing I’ve added is the opportunity to hide. Hiding is simply finding an area in the game where you can be sure the agent won’t see you. Even if they’re chasing you, hiding gives you cover to wait out their search. However, once you step into a hiding “zone,” a timer starts. If you hide for too long, you’ll gain another condition—another die you’ll have to roll away later. To me, this is another way to keep the tension high so you never get too comfortable while engaging with this system.

Finally, I’ve included certain traversal areas that give you passive environmental conditions. Examples include sticky surfaces or cloudy hazes that apply temporary conditions while you’re in them. You can’t roll these away as long as you remain in that environment. Guards can pass through these areas too, and the conditions affect them as well. Maybe you follow an agent into a hazy zone, but time your move so that they’re in it and you’re not. Yet more flexibility and reactivity in the system.

I want all of this to be dynamic, dramatic, and interesting—getting players to think about spatial traversal. But I also want to make sure players aren’t forced to engage with stealth if it’s not their style. They might move through a space that’s a little dangerous, or pursue an alternate path. The game is still a dice-based RPG at its core, so all of these systems serve role-playing, dice strategy, and the drama that comes with it.

To wit, I’m not grafting a stealth game into my current one—I’m incorporating stealth elements to serve dice-driven gameplay. It’s a genre hybrid approach. It’s a way for me to push what I feel is possible in this sort of space.

Part of why I’m excited about Early Access is that I get to workshop and refine this idea with you all. If you see opportunities for balance, for elevating the experience—or if it gets in the way of your fun—I want to know. I’m excited about the idea, but it’s still a work-in-progress, and I welcome your feedback when the time is right!

I look forward to sharing more of my new ideas with you from Moves of The Diamond Hand.