Devil Dice

About Devil Dice

Devil Dice (1998), known in Japan as XI, is Shift's million-selling PlayStation puzzle game in which a small devil rolls giant dice to match faces and set off chains.

Devil Dice in Depth

The player controls a small devil running around a grid covered in large dice. It can walk on the ground beneath the towering dice or stand on top of them, moving from die to die or rolling a die in the direction it runs to turn up a different face. Making a group of adjacent dice showing the same number of pips, with at least as many dice as the number shown, makes them slowly sink into the field and vanish, and adding more matching dice to a sinking set creates chain reactions. Some modes add special types of dice with different properties for extra challenge.

Battle pits the player against a single computer opponent, each building chains and cancelling the other's. Puzzle mode asks players to clear all the dice within a limited number of moves, and completing a row of puzzles unlocks a picture to play on in Battle mode. Trial is the standard arcade-style mode, clearing as many dice as possible before the grid fills. Wars is a fast multiplayer mode for up to four computer opponents or five human players with a multitap, in which chains damage rivals until one remains. GamePro and Next Generation were both positive despite its high difficulty, and GamesTM later called it one of ten underrated PlayStation gems.

Making Devil Dice

Lead designer Yuichi Sugiyama said it was made for Game Yarōze, a Japan-only programme run from 1995 to 1999 in which over 3,000 participants competed for a development environment to create commercial PlayStation games; over thirty titles reached market, including Devil Dice and the first Doko Demo Issyo. Programmer Shuichi Yano was one of the successful applicants. Shift developed it and Sony Computer Entertainment published it in Japan in 1998 and Europe in 1999. It received favourable reviews, with 30 out of 40 from Famitsu, became a million-seller, and returned as a PlayStation Classic demo on PS3 and PSP in 2007.