Cute and cheerful, with a fantastic j-pop soundtrack, Bombastic is an interesting and quite difficult puzzle game. It boasts several variations of the same rather complex rule set, up to 5 person multiplayer, and a short but adorable story mode. However, when I say difficult I mean difficult and the learning curve of the game might be a bit much for all but the most devoted puzzle game fans.

The rules for the game are difficult to explain. You start out with a board full of dice and your character, called an Aqui-Chan, standing on one of them. As you move around the board, the dice rolls. The goal is to clear the board by making the dice explode, which is done by getting as many like-faces touching one another as there are dots on that face of the dice. So if two twos touch, they will start to burn and eventually explode, same for three threes and so on. The higher the number, the slower they are to explode. Also, if a die of the same number, or one lower, is caught in the explosion, it will begin to burn and eventually explode. If Aqui-chan gets caught in an explosion then its game over for you. Once you begin to set up chain reactions, this becomes more and more of a threat. Within Bombastic there are several in-game movies explaining different parts of the rule set. In fact the first level of Quest Mode is a tutorial. With all of this, the game can be a very frustrating experience for beginners due to the time it takes to really teach yourself where each number is on the die.

In Quest Mode you will encounter the story of the Aqui-Chan, half demon and half angel mischief makers who snuck out of bed one night to go search for their angelic grandfather. The levels are set up as linear puzzles with set answers instead of the square grids as in other game modes. You must manipulate the dice in a way to clear out monsters and other obstructions in your path to make it to the end of 3 mini-levels before you fight the boss monster. While the puzzles in the mini-levels are all very linear and have a pattern that must be figured out, reloading the game subtly changes the layout of the puzzles. So you really have to understand why an answer is the right one instead of just remembering that the previous solution was correct.

Unfortunately, the mini-levels are also where you run into the biggest control problems. When Aqui-Chan is on a die, moving up will always move you one square forward, moving back will always move you one square back, and so on. Once you get off the dice and on to the floor, something you do frequently in Quest Mode, Aqui-Chan no longer moves according to the grid. Since you cannot use the analog sticks to move at all, controlling your character can become a huge pain very quickly, especially with traps and monsters set up close together on the floor. The boss battles in Quest Mode are extremely difficult and time consuming. One battle was set up on a square grid, with the boss monster sitting in one corner. Every so often he would eat dice from the third row on either side of his position. With this you had to predict when he was going to eat, set up a series of flaming die in the third row, and hope that they didn't go off before he lapped one up. While Quest Mode is very difficult, it's also very short and serves its purpose in unlocking Classic Mode, which allows you to play traditional Devil Dice.

As mentioned before, this game is adorable. The Aqui-Chan and all the monsters are cel-shaded with inventive and fun monster design. While a dice-based puzzle game doesn't need state of the art graphics, the levels in Quest Mode are imaginatively designed and vibrantly cartoon-like. The music is also top-notch, with cheerful j-pop and toe-tapping beats playing as you cause chaos in a 5-person game of War.

While the controls and the inability to use the analog stick can be difficult, Bombastic is a solid puzzle game with a lot of different game modes and replay value for people who enjoy a challenge.