Can Moves of the Diamond Hand make unfinishedness feel like the point rather than the flaw? Yes, and that’s why this dice-based RPG deserves attention now, not only when its unfinished structure is expected to be completed in 2027.
According to The Verge, Moves of the Diamond Hand is an Early Access game from Cosmo D, available on PC, macOS, and steamOS, including the Steam Deck. Its current build includes the first two chapters, with the next chapter scheduled for this summer.
“You’re going to have a lot of strange conversations, and you’re going to roll a lot of dice.”
That line is the whole contract. If you accept it, Moves of the Diamond Hand stops looking like an incomplete RPG and starts looking like a rare argument for letting players into a living, unresolved creative process.
Can Moves of the Diamond Hand sell mystery instead of polish?
Moves of the Diamond Hand does not appear interested in hiding its rough edges. The Verge describes grimy, stark, blocky environments, stretched faces, small heads, and an eerie soundtrack. That sounds less like a studio chasing showroom perfection and more like a game with the nerve to let its oddness sit in the room.
That matters because the game’s premise is already bent. You arrive by train, meet an old mentor disgraced by some political scandal, and declare your ambition to join Circus X, a powerful organization whose paths to entry can involve city politics, sandwich-making, or music.
XOOMAR analysis: the unfinished state works here because the design already trains the player to accept uncertainty. The game doesn’t promise clean answers upfront. It promises systems, mood, friction, and questions. That’s a better Early Access bargain than the usual vague hope that missing pieces will someday turn into a finished personality.
Why do the dice feel like dialogue instead of combat math?
The central mechanic gives the player one upgradeable die for each of seven stats, including familiar RPG territory like Physique and Observation, alongside stranger pillars like Cooking and Music. Challenges roll against the relevant attribute. You need to match or beat the result.
That could have been sterile. Instead, the constant rolling makes social life unstable. You roll for conversations. You roll for small talk. You roll for opening a door. Cooking, performing music, laundering disguises, and mixing cocktails all add their own sub-mechanics and dice quirks.
The Verge notes that players can selectively re-roll dice in a way similar to Yahtzee, while final outcomes translate into experience points whether the roll succeeds or fails. That gives failure a shape. It isn’t dead air. It becomes part of character-building.
| Design choice | Effect on play |
|---|---|
| Dice for almost every action | Small moments become tense instead of decorative |
| Upgradeable stat dice | Progression feels granular and visible |
| Re-roll choices | Chance becomes something players manage, not just suffer |
| XP from outcomes | Failure still feeds the character arc |
XOOMAR analysis: this is why the tabletop comparison lands. The point is not just probability. It’s exposure. Every interaction asks whether your character can actually perform the identity you’re building.
Does the blocky 2000s look give Off-Peak City more authority?
The game’s 2000s-era first-person RPG and immersive sim feel could have been empty nostalgia. Based on the source material, it does something more useful: it makes Off-Peak City feel handmade, suspicious, and slightly wrong.
This is a city shaped by sinister corporations, corrupt politicians, shady operatives, musicians, restaurateurs, and underground tailors. Circus X influences politics and the sandwich supply chain. A local election involves a scandal-plagued technocrat, a former boy-band star, and a corporate-controlled clone of a mayor from decades past.
That visual roughness leaves space for interpretation. A slicker presentation might flatten the joke. Here, the awkward faces and grimy spaces appear to support the noir absurdity rather than apologize for it.
This is where Moves of the Diamond Hand gains authority. It looks like a place where a sentient Big Mouth Billy Bass can become an object of political scheming, because the whole city already feels like it was assembled from bad decisions, private obsessions, and unpaid debts.
Can unresolved storylines make Early Access feel alive?
Most of the main quests currently end in roadblocks, The Verge says, because the Early Access build currently implements only the opening chapters. That’s a real limitation. It’s also part of the appeal, for now.
Mystery behaves differently in games than in novels or film. Players don’t just observe confusion. They inhabit it. They test systems, revisit spaces, build theories, and discover which details are jokes, which are mechanics, and which are warnings.
The source material describes Diamond Hand itself as mysterious and anarchic, frequently mentioned but not explained. That can be compelling if the existing world has enough density to carry the absence. Here, the early material includes corporate clones replacing human artists, clones who are conscious and frustrated by creative limits, political maneuvering, jazz arguments, laundry, library books, lettuce harvesting, and sandwich perfectionism.
XOOMAR analysis: that density is the difference between productive incompletion and empty teasing. Moves of the Diamond Hand is not asking players to admire a roadmap. It is asking them to live inside a half-open puzzle box.
Should the Steam Deck angle be treated as proof of handheld fit?
Careful. The Verge says the game is available on steamOS and that the reviewer played it on Steam Deck. That does not prove it is especially suited to handheld play, nor does it establish that portable sessions improve the experience.
Still, the availability matters. A niche, conversation-heavy PC RPG being playable through the Steam Deck lowers one practical barrier for players who already use that device. It also puts a strange, system-heavy indie game in the same hardware conversation as more mainstream PC libraries.
This is not a hardware review. But access shapes experimentation. XOOMAR has tracked that question from different angles in our Steam Controller coverage and our Game Boy Camera coverage. Devices change what people actually touch, even when the creative risk belongs to the software.
For Moves of the Diamond Hand, the smart claim is narrow: Steam Deck support expands where some players can encounter its weirdness. The source does not support anything stronger.
Why is buying an unfinished RPG still a real gamble?
The strongest counterargument is simple: Early Access asks players to pay for possibility. A mystery-heavy RPG raises the stakes because unresolved plotlines can feel rich in chapter two and disappointing by the finish.
The current plan, per The Verge, leaves the full launch for 2027. That means today’s player is buying into an unfinished structure. The next chapter is scheduled for this summer, but the full shape remains out of reach.
That caution should not be waved away by charm. Moves of the Diamond Hand may be dense and tantalizing now, but the final judgment depends on whether its systems and storylines cohere when all chapters are present.
XOOMAR analysis: enthusiasm is justified. Blind faith is not. The right posture is engaged skepticism: praise what exists, track what remains, and don’t confuse promise with delivery.
Do weird RPGs need players before every edge gets sanded down?
Yes. Games like this need players who can reward risk without lowering standards.
The source describes a hard-boiled sci-fi thriller involving subway busking, mayoral politics, library books, lettuce, jazz, laundry, and dice. That combination sounds absurd because it is absurd. It also sounds authored. Personal. Difficult to committee into existence.
The industry does not need every RPG to chase cinematic smoothness or retention machinery. It needs room for games that are abrasive in productive ways, where Music can become a dominant power because sewing machines, animal-human hybrids, and mixology all bend around improvisation.
That does not mean completion stops mattering. It means ambition, voice, and surprise should count alongside polish. Moves of the Diamond Hand earns attention because its current build already has a point of view.
Should curious RPG fans roll now or wait for 2027?
Curious RPG fans should consider playing Moves of the Diamond Hand now if they’re comfortable with incompletion, unresolved mysteries, and systems that turn ordinary actions into dicey little confrontations.
Players who need finished arcs should wait. That is not a lesser choice. It is the disciplined one.
Critics and players should treat this kind of Early Access oddity with two hands on the wheel: generosity for what is already vivid, discipline about what still has to land. The game is literally about rolling dice. Buying in early is one more roll.
For once, that feels honest.
Key Takeaways
- The game makes a case for Early Access as a creative process rather than just an unfinished product.
- Its dice-based conversations and surreal presentation give players a distinctive RPG experience now.
- The planned 2027 completion makes its current structure important for players deciding whether to join early.
Originally published on XOOMAR. For more news and analysis, visit XOOMAR.
