iDice

Michael (Admin) | Aug 20, 2008 Games

User rating:

(2 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

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Dice games somehow always manage to be fun regardless of the circumstances (except when you’re getting slaughtered on a Vegas craps table, that is). iDice feels a lot like video poker but without all those pesky cards and suits and all that.

The basic idea behind iDice is to get as many points as you can out of 13 “hands”, many of which resemble poker hands. You get to roll the dice three times for each hand, and just like video poker you can hold certain “cards” (dice) that you want to keep. The catch is that you have to score each hand under one of 13 categories, and once you’ve used up a category you can’t use it again. Choose wisely and you’ll score a lot. Be an idiot and your score will suck.

That’s really all there is to it. Visually the game is very blah, but if you’re having fun with the dice you won’t care how plain-jane the interface is. When playing for the first time, however, even a seasoned gambler might be in the dark about how things are scored.

Here are the iDice scoring rules, straight from 1026 Development:

Ones, twos, threes, fours, fives, and sixes: The score is the total value of that number dice.
(Ex. if you select “Twos” and have three 2′s, you will receive 6 points)

Three of a Kind: Must have 3 or more of the same dice value, score is total of all 5 dice
(Ex. 4, 4, 4, 2, 6 would be 4+4+4+2+6=20)

Four of a Kind: Must have 4 or more of the same dice value, score is total of all 5 dice
(Ex. 3,3,3,3,2 would be 3+3+3+3+2=14)

Full House: Must have 3 of one value and 2 of another, score is a set 25 points.
(Ex. 2,2,2,3,3 or 5,5,6,6,6 would both be worth 25 points)

Small Straight: Must have the value of four of the five dice in sequence, score is a set 30 points
(Ex. 1,2,3,4,6 or 2,3,4,5,4 would both be worth 30 points)

Large Straight: Must have the value of all five dice in sequence, score is a set 40 points
(Ex. 1,2,3,4,5 or 2,3,4,5,6 would both be worth 40 points)

Yahtzee: All 5 dice must have the same value, set value of 50 points
(Ex. 6,6,6,6,6 or 3,3,3,3,3 would both be worth 50 points)

Chance: Values of all 5 dice are added together, no matter what the die values are
(Ex. 1,3,2,5,2 would be 11 points and 5,6,2,5,1 would be 19 points)

Ohhhh so THAT’S what Chance is! It all makes sense now.

Aside from iDice needing some serious cosmetic work, it would also be nice to have the features that have become standard on so many other games… a menu/reset button, remembering where I was if I get interrupted, a high score board, things like that. Right now the game is essentially feature-less which is a shame.

iDice seems largely bug-free, but there were a few times when I know I had a certain hand like 4-of-a-kind or a full house, and the game gave me zero points when I selected the proper category! Ugh, luckily I didn’t have any money riding on those hands. This only happened a couple of times, but it still needs to be fixed.

My biggest complaint, though, has nothing to do with the actual gameplay itself… it’s that the “Instructions” page isn’t nearly informative enough! I didn’t know what Chance was, I haven’t played Yahtzee since I was about 9 so I didn’t know what that was, and in general I had to do a lot of guesswork to figure out the scoring system. Yes, I’ve posted the scoring here, but I’ll bet the ratings for this game would be much higher if this info were included with the app itself.

Hopefully 1026 Development can address some (or all) of these issues to make the game more user-friendly, but iDice is still a lot of fun the way it is. If you can get some competition going with a friend or two, it’s probably a blast. $.99 sounds about right for a simple game like this, so I say go ahead and take the gamble. If you like hitting the tables, odds are you’ll like it.