Devil Dice (1998)

Devil Dice, aka XI (pronounced "Sai") in Japan, is one of the most unique games I've ever played, and stands out to this day because as far as I can tell nobody has ever attempted to copy it even a little. Basically this is a game where you are a demon baby in an isometric grid world full of dice, and your goal is to run about on the dice (rotating them with each grid-step) to match numbers together. ("CLUNK-CLUNK-CLUNK-CLUNK") Get four dice to connect with 4 dots on top, and they'll disappear (or three dice with 3 dots on top, five dice with 5 dots on top, etc etc). Meanwhile, more dice appear on the stage, and if the stage fills up then it's game over and time to enter your name if you got a high score.

Along with the regular "play until you lose" mode, there's a timed mode (for quicker games), a versus mode (which tbh is way too hectic for me), and a puzzle mode -- my favorite of these extra modes. For the puzzles, you get a limited number of space movements to try to clear all the dice on the field. Challenging brain teasers, though you might be able to brute-force things if you've got all day.

So all in all this is an interesting game that I do like to go back to from time to time for a quick go at it. But it's definitely a bit of a steep learning curve compared to most action-puzzle games. It may take you hours of practice just to wrap your head around it (tricky isometric movement, keeping track of what number is where on the dice in relation to which side you're standing on, etc), and then many more hours of practice to actually get the hang of it all. If you like weird games or are on the lookout for underrated PS1 hidden gems though, this is well-worth checking out.

This is a pretty “devilish” PS1 puzzle game split into two core types of gameplay plus some multiplayer. The mechanic uniting the modes is best explained with an example: you roll or push dice around on a grid in such a way where if you get three adjacent dice that all show “3” facing up, then they get cleared from the board, four adjacent with “4” facing up, they get cleared, and so on.

Sounds relatively simple, but wow it is one of the hardest puzzle games I have ever played. The two main single-player gameplay types are a timer-based action-puzzler mode where the board slowly fills up with dice and you have to keep it as clear as possible, and a more methodical mode where you solve individual puzzles with a move limit instead of a time limit.

The action mode is so hard that I can barely even play it, lol—I mean seriously, it’s fun but this is possibly the hardest action puzzler mode I have ever seen. The thing is that if you see a die with 4 facing up, and you want it to be a 2, you have to both roll the die in a way where 2 is facing up and it arrives at the correct position. There are more mechanics going on, plus other dice in the way that make this even harder than it sounds.

The slower pure puzzle mode is a lot of fun for me though, bringing in different dice types like some that slide to the edge of the stage when pushed, some that can’t be pushed at all, etc. The levels are really bite-sized and I think would make a great mobile game in today’s market.

I don’t think you can get great at this without a solid amount of practice and a good aptitude for things like Rubik’s cubes, but it’s a fun, different-feeling puzzle game to mess around with for sure.