The Digest: Ubisoft and Exee have teamed up to create a fun, yet painstakingly difficult puzzle game.

THE FACT SHEET

RELEASE DATE: May 26th, 2010
PUBLISHER: Ubisoft
DEVELOPER: Exee
PRICE: 800 MS Points
GENRE: Puzzle and Trivia

PRODUCT OVERVIEW:
Mixing action based and puzzle mechanics in a 3D world, Voodoo Dice is an innovative, challenging puzzler that plays with your mind to lead you to solve puzzles in unique and interesting ways.

PRODUCT FEATURES:

• Great Multiplayer
• Lovely Visuals
• Enjoyable Music
• Long Single Player

Anyone who is at least moderately interested in videogames knows who Ubisoft is. The titles Splinter Cell and Assassin’s Creed should be some of the first things that comes to mind. These critically acclaimed series have been absorbing the time of today’s youth and preventing them from going outside.

Now, we have Voodoo Dice. No it’s not some sort of tribal type of game ala’ “Enslaved”. It is a puzzle game that involves you, the player, controlling a single die to the end of each stage. No there’s no secret agent espionage relation, nor is there any Italian influence. This is a puzzle game from Ubisoft.

Ubisoft decided to take a fresh look at game and release a puzzle game on Xbox Live Arcade. The company behind the game alone should bring attention to it, but the title itself is also intriguing. Ubisoft’s “Voodoo Dice” just sort of rolls of the tongue.

With all that said, there is one problem with the game. One really big problem. It’s not the pricing or the graphics. It’s honestly just the difficulty. The game is just too hard. In the history of the world, no one ever thought a 3D die could belittle you and make someone feel as important as the worlds smartest termite.

When the game first starts up, you are on a solitary path and everything is going good. The first level acts as the tutorial level, like so many other games. The first obstacle is encountered and you figure out that you have to match the top of your die with the face on the other die even before the tutorial text appears. Ever see anyone get stuck on the training mission before? It can happen with this game and is more likely then one would think.

The way the game controls is exactly like a real die. With each move, the top face changes. So, you basically have to count all of your steps, backtrack and inevitably just move around randomly until you accidentally match the faces. There will be times that you actually think you have control over what you’re doing, but all it takes is one extra move to completely mess up your game, and possibly force you to restart the mission for the third time.

So simply moving in the game is something that needs to be thought about constantly. It’s a puzzle game, so that makes sense. As stated earlier there are obstacles impeding your path. Some are as simple as matching the faces, others require you to move a statue onto a button, and some will even destroy your die. So you have to take into account the things around you, whilst counting your steps. It’s not easy and it doesn’t try to be. Beating levels in other games is fun. Beating levels in Voodoo Dice deserves praise each and every time.

The way the missions are set up is similar to Nintendo’s Mario. You have worlds that you unlock by collecting a specific object (Emeralds and other stones in this case) to unlock other worlds. You get these rare stones by completing levels. The game has 4 worlds and over 60 missions. That’s a lot of frustration. But amongst all the swearing, controller throwing, and quitting to dashboard, the game is at least nice to look at.

It has a very refreshing tribal feel to it. The die that you control looks like it was carved out of wood and the faces were etched on with a knife. It’s a perfect fit. The levels that you play on all take place on various platforms all floating in the deep blue ocean. The worlds vary as well. World one is definitely a lot more tropical and feels joyous. World two has the appearance of a village at the bottom of a volcano: a lot of reds and browns, which creates a completely different atmosphere. The music changes along with it. The light-hearted bongos turned into dark and heavy toms. Graphically, some would sum it up to being cute. After they play it it’s still cute, but cute like the Snuggles bear filled with C4.

Single Player is very straight forward in the end. Start at one side and reach the other. Simple concept, near impossible execution at times. Something that wasn’t expected was a nice robust multiplayer experience however.

Voodoo Dice allows up to four players to battle it out in several game modes. Race for example requires players to, yes, participate in a race. What the game does for example is put the obstacles that you have to match the faces with throughout the race. It’s strange how much more fun it is to have three others suck at a game with you. Another game mode is their twist on keep away. First person to collect the emerald would have to avoid the other players for a set amount of time. There’s a speed power-up which is extremely useful, but there’s also a booby trap that, once collected, will reverse all of your controls. Combine that with sinking platforms and deadly obstacles and you have a concoction of fun.

Conclusion: Ubisoft did create a fun game. It’s just really, really hard. It looks great, it sounds great, and it’s a good game overall. Multiplayer brings a lot of replay value to the game and will work as a great party game . Buying the game is recommended but you have to sign a waiver first.

Single Player: 4/5 | Multi-Player: 4/5

Special thanks to Ubisoft for providing us with a copy of the game for review.