The first - and only - floor puzzle to be shown in KMVR was the now-infamous Slice Me Dice Me room, one of Lord Fear's little innovations.
The design of the Slice Me Dice Me puzzle is fiendishly simple; there are various steps the dungeoneer must take to complete the sequence, rather like the causeways of the original Knightmare. There are suspended tiles hovering between concrete pathways, and the job of the dungeoneer is to guide his or her avatar across the room by jumping on the right tiles.

The twist in the room, however, is that the concrete slabs are not safe - you can even see the grooves that have been carved - because there are mechanical axes swinging back and forth at regular intervals (hence, 'slice me / dice me!'), and the lettered tiles aren't safe, because you may step on the wrong one! Hence, the dungeoneer will need to be fleet of foot, and the advisor will need to be keen of mind to get around this puzzle.


The sequence always appears to be a letter-based one. The rows of tiles spell out words themselves, but that isn't important, other than to be flashy and show off the animation. In the KMVR pilot, Fear rather stupidly chatted openly with Lissard about changing the combination for the room: he told the Atlantean to use his own name, but not the first three letters, and reverse it. Thinking laterally, this meant that the combination was DRAS.

Vishar got to grips with this rather easily, and guided Arthur through the puzzle with relatively little difficulty. It isn't really a hard puzzle as long as you get your timing and combination right, and fortunately for this team, they did.
As the only known attempt to traverse the Slice Me Dice Me room was successful, we can only speculate as to what a failed attempt would look like. The room certainly offers up some interesting possibilities! A failed attempt would either involve the dungeoneer being hit by an axe, or stepping on the wrong tile. As the floating tiles appear to be held up by magic, a death here would most likely involve the tile simply disappearing, and the avatar plummeting, somewhat akin to a causeway death or a death on Play Your Cards Right. An axe death would probably be most satisfying, although with the 'dumbed-down' feel of KMVR, who knows what would happen? We can only hope for a Corridor of Blades-stylée death with the red paint!

Altogether, Televirtual should be credited for the creation of the Slice Me Dice Me room; although its elements are derivative of earlier puzzles, the constant movement of the axes, the problem-solving element and the excellent incidental music made it a very welcome addition to Knightmare VR.

While I initially said that I'd most certainly like to see how other teams would handle this obstacle for sure, I finally got my wish: Slice Me Dice Me appeared as a Level 2 floor puzzle in the Knightmare Geek Week episode. The team actually perished on this appearance of the puzzle: their dungeoneer took a jump forwards, but misjudged the distance required to land on the first tile. He plummeted into a pit, ending the quest.

Treguard was heard to remark that the dungeoneer in question had "found his way to Level 3," although not in the right way, suggesting that the sheer drop below was an open entrance to lower parts of the Dungeon.

login to vote