Review: Farkle Dice by SmartBox Design

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Game Play Settings

Farkle Dice has some great options for all aspects of the program from scoring and player options to some that help to speed up game play. Like many dice games there are a number of officially and unofficially recognized scoring options. Farkle Dice does not support all of them but you will find quite a few of the more popular ones included. All of the menus are available throughout the game by choosing the Game selection in the lower left corner of the screen.

There is a game setup screen where you can set a break-in setting. This means your first bank must contain that amount of points before you can take the score. You can still pass if you choose but the points will not be added to your score. This adds a bit more strategy to it because of the 3 Farkle rule. There is also a target score (Play To), but you can only choose between 5k and 10K points which is fine with me since either setting will still get you done in the 2-3 minute window, but some may have played the original game to 15-25k points. Farkle Dice offers the option of getting 500 points for three pairs (which is not in the “official” rules but a nice option), and for forcing a player to continue rolling if they have scored all of the dice on their board. This one means that if you have banked 4 dice and roll two 1’s you must bank the 1’s and roll again. If this setting is off you have the option to bank the 1’s and pass potentially saving yourself from FARKLING (are you allowed to conjugate Farkle).

Farkle Dice allows you to pit yourself against up to 5 other players controlled by unique AI’s in a race to 10K points. I will say that it seems they did a great job in creating the AI for the players as they appear to take different routes and make different decisions in a variety of scenarios. This is something you don’t often see done or don’t often see done well, and SmartBox really did a great job with it. You will notice the adjectives assigned to the player names and they do a good job of describing what to expect from that player’s game play. I have even found myself changing strategies in response to different computer players.

The last screen is designed to enhance the game experience. You can have the sound level tied to your system settings, which is a great extra feature I wish more developers would implement. It can be changed by un-checking the box and using the slider that appears but I like having it locked to my system sound settings. You can also completely mute the sound regardless of what your sound settings are. The option to Show Scoring Dice Hints will enable the gold triangles above dice that can score, and helps to quickly identify what to keep. Show Playing Tips will cause a pop-up to appear for any new game play item, but only for the first time it happens. To see the tips again, select Reset Tips and it will show the previously viewed tips.

Another screen that is available from the Game menu is the Statistics. Here you will find various statistics from the games you have played. This is a very nice feature that again is often overlooked by many developers, and while it doesn’t really enhance game play it does offer some type of long term reward for playing the game often. Along with the ability to see your own stats you can also see stats for the computer players as well. Using this you can find out who the best adversaries are. So if you want to have a tough game you can find the players with the highest winning percentage and select them for a Battle Royale. On the flip side if you are on a losing streak you can select the players with the lowest win percentage to get yourself back on the plus side.

Strategy Tips

What makes this such a great game (for me personally) is the combination of luck and strategy, along with all of the great game play features. When you combine luck and strategy it allows for many different styles to be effective and this again makes it a fun game to play over and over. The next section is a few strategy tips I have picked up while playing, but you may end up developing your own that will work better.

Before we get too deep into strategy here are a few general rules to keep in mind; they won’t apply in all situations, but are good pointers to start with. 350-450 pts is a pretty good roll and will keep you in contention most of the time. If you have 3 or more dice to roll you will generally be safe in continuing your turn, but two or less may not be such a good idea. Oh yeah and FARKLING is a bad thing

Taking your points

On many of your initial rolls you will have more than one scoring option like rolling a 1 (100pts) and rolling three 3’s (300pts) or rolling two 1’s (200pts) and a 5 (50pts). Do you take all of the points on the board, or do you take less dice and try to roll again. Unless you have a better than average point total on your first roll you want to leave yourself a chance to continue your roll (3 or more dice to roll) so if you roll four 5’s you probably don’t want to bank all four of them.

Taking three 2’s (200pts) is rarely a good idea because it won’t get you an average or better score, and will leave you with a tough time continuing your turn. Taking three of anything else is usually a good idea.

Continuing your turn

Normally you will want to continue your turn at least until you reach an average score. This means that you may want to leave some points on the board; this way you still have enough dice to continue your turn. You may also want to take two 1’s versus taking three 3’s if they both came on your initial roll.

Another big consideration is if you score all six dice and are deciding whether to continue your turn. Normally you can feel very comfortable rolling six dice as the chances are 42:1 that you will be successful, but even this may be too much of a chance if you have a lot of points in the bank and are in a tight game. Other times you may need to make up some points and continue your second set of dice down to 3 or so.

End Game Strategy

This introduces another level of strategy as you could be locked in a tight game where you need 550 points to reach 10K, but your opponent already has 9900. You score 550 but only have one live die left; do you take the points (which would put you at 10k and force the other player to reach you) or do you try again to set a better score knowing that your opponent is probably going to end up with a better score. I usually take the chance to increase the score and get a fresh set of dice, feeling like I am going to lose anyway, but you may decide that if the other player FARKLES you will win. This is where different strategies can all be good, and what makes this game so enjoyable overall.

Next Page: Final take and program information

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