Voodoo Dice
Voodoo Dice apparently released on the 360 in mid-May, but PS3, Wii, PC, and iPhone owners can now participate in this original puzzler as well. In Voodoo Dice, you control a die, rolling around one of 60 different boards, each with their own puzzles to solve and pitfalls to avoid. The first few stages introduce you to some pretty simple puzzles and coach you along as you find a way to conquer them. For example, you need to get your die from the starting block to the goal, but between you and that goal are several other dice, each with a different number “face up”, as it were. In order to move past these dice, you have to maneuver your die in such a way that you match them (that is, have the same number face up), and this matching must occur while you land your die side-by-side with the one you are trying to match. Do this and the obstacle die disappears, allowing you to reach the goal. Other puzzles include rolling over buttons in a certain sequence to raise or lower gates and teleporting around the board via landing on certain squares to find the finish line.
The game’s visuals are up to par with what I’d expect from a game that portrays its hero as a six-sided die. The jungle-themed stages (because palm trees and tiki masks are to voodoo as stained glass windows and ornate, flowing robes are to Catholicism – or at least that’s what TV teaches us) include a fitting soundtrack that didn’t become overly monotonous, but provided enough play time to get you from one stage to the next. I can’t say that I’d ever pay money to play Voodoo Dice, but this unique puzzler is worth the bandwidth to try out the demo.