Devil Dice

Devil Dice leverages the simplicity of die orientation to complicate what would otherwise be rote tile-matching mechanics. Six-sided dice lay across a grid, with the cutesy “Aqui” demon running around on top of them.¹ Moving off the side of an unobstructed die will rotate it into the adjacent space, exposing a number on top. When a set of contiguous dice share the same exposed number, with as many or more dice as the number on the face, they all sink into the ground, yielding points equivalent to the number multiplied by the count of dice in the set. If, while these dice are sinking, the player moves another die with the same number next to the sinking set, a chain counter increments and re-adds the points from the set, now multiplied by the counter. New dice rise from the floor in accordance with the number of dice cleared; if the player falls to the floor due to standing on a sinking die, they can use a freshly spawning die to reach the top layer once again.

On its own this concept already requires strong spatial planning: dice rise in a random orientation, and moving a die will always rotate it to a different side (thankfully there is a helper visualization for when the die is occluded). A maneuver as simple as moving a die to an adjacent square while retaining the same top number requires executing a four-square loop. Selecting which dice should go in a chain involves more than just a scan across the top faces: keeping track of orientation for rising dice and memorizing stock one- or two-square maneuvers to switch to separate faces is essential, and being able to recall said maneuvers quickly as dice sink around you trumps careful consideration once the spawn speed ratchets up later.

Right below the avatar, the transparent outline of two sinking blocks as part of a chain can be seen. Quickly flipping the four-dot block in front of the avatar one square down will continue the chain, as the opposite side of the five is two; on a die, opposite sides always sum to seven.

While dropping a die into a chain seems like a sigh of relief, doing so without non-sinking dice around traps unsuspecting players in place while the chain lowers, and getting trapped on the ground wastes further valuable time when waiting on rising dice. However, the player can push dice laterally while grounded, giving them small chances to set up the board in a more amenable way before returning to real gameplay on the top layer. Further subtleties add onto this: there’s a height threshold at which a player cannot cross to surrounding dice while the die they stand on sinks, but adding onto a chain actually bumps the height of each sinking die up by a smidge, giving players the chance to append a die and then cross the chain with just enough height to reach dice islands elsewhere on the board. Devil Dice’s depth comes from integrating gentle rules like these rather than stacking additional gimmicks on top.

The chain counter multiplier above implies that the optimal strategy is racking up a long chain rather than building giant individual sets. Top players quickly accrue score using this by endlessly chaining the two-dot faces over and over again. Luckily, there’s still plenty of intrigue if you restrain yourself to this, and it may even help new players focus their efforts in the midst of conflicting chain options. Chaining on twos has the unique benefit of needing only a single remaining die from the prior chain to rechain at any given time, which helps when the sinking time for each die is staggered. However, this also means that rolling a two next to another will instantly start a chain, which easily happens on accident and pollutes the field with simultaneous chains. The same effect happens with the one-dot, which has a screen clear function: matching two one-dots sinks every one-dot on the board. This can save your life with a stacked field, but it may melt potential chains on accident. Chaining on twos also highlights another subtle mechanic: dice sinking below the height threshold can be snuffed out by rolling a living die on top. With larger sets of two-dots in a chain, this ability shrinks your available space to maneuver while opening up strategic options to modify the chain’s layout.

An untimed puzzle mode exists to teach more complex maneuvers within a limited number of rotations per challenge. This mode adds different kinds of dice to the proceedings, although many of them only show their unique gimmick when pushed in the floor mode; the puzzles that keep you on the ground tend to degenerate into bog-standard Sokoban state space plumbing. [src]

Unusually, Devil Dice’s multiplayer is not garbage-trading on separate playfields but rather players fighting for space on a single board. In the Battle mode, players attempt to get four differently numbered sets added to their personal stash by chaining them, with opponents stealing back sets by arranging them on their own. In the Wars mode, scores (without the chain multiplier it seems) from each arranged set are deducted from each opponent’s health bar out of a total of five players, making fast chaining essential to reigning supreme. In each of these, cutting off other players from each dice island and manipulating the traversable playfield adds a new layer of strategy to what would normally be pure fodder for matching.