A player’s view of Dice With Buddies (aka Yahtzee With Friends)

Dice With Buddies/Yahtzee With Friends (by Scopely) are two games that are actually the same game. Literally. For no reason at all, I can imagine the same company making two games that are EXACTLY THE SAME, to the point where you could (and have) start a game in, say, Yahtzee, and continue it in Dice. The only difference I can see is the color scheme (Yahtzee goes with the familiar red and yellow, while Dice goes with blue and lighter blue).

Leaving head scratching over this mystery aside. Dice With Buddies is a worthwhile game (I’m sticking with Dice here because it’s what I have on my phone…just because I prefer the blue color scheme), available for Android, iOS, and Facebook. Everyone has played Yahtzee, and if you haven’t, where did you grow up? Or maybe I’m just old…

The game is simple though, Yahtzee, so I won’t get bogged down in that. Scopely does a good job of bringing the game to life, adding creative touches to a simple and straightforward game. The ability to collect custom dice and “frames” for your portrait or avatar (which can be linked from your Facebook account). In addition to traditional 1v1 games against your Facebook friends or matched strangers, there are daily tournaments and long-term “ladder matches” available to play.

In daily tournaments, you play against a group of random players and try to place at or near the top to win “bonus dice” prizes (which can be used in any game to give you an extra roll to try to improve your score) and “diamonds”, which can be used for replays when things go wrong in a game or to buy custom dice of different styles and colors. The collectible custom dice are useless in terms of improving your score, but they are fun to look at and, well, collecting them is something to do.

One of the most frustrating, yet oddly compelling, parts of the game are the periodic ladder tournaments against computer opponents on different themes (Clue, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Valentine’s Day, you get the idea). You must play every day to keep climbing the ladder or risk losing position. If you lose a match, you lose position… Unless you spend some of your bonus dice to stay where you are. As you defeat opponents and climb the ladder, you receive rewards such as experience points, bonus dice, and diamonds. These tournaments usually last a few weeks, and with one opponent a day, it can take a while to get to the top (you can play more than once a day by spending, you guessed it, bonus dice).

My favorite game option is one-on-one against friends or those provided by the matchmaking system. These games can take anywhere from minutes to days to complete, depending on the response time of both players. Players can even message each other from within the game, offering friendly praise or taunts.

The main drawback of this game, the only thing that I seriously lack, is a game option against CPU. The ladder matches are against the CPU, but like I said, they’re only one per day, and the opponents range from ridiculously easy to frustratingly impossible to beat. A standalone player vs. CPU system is a glaring omission, one that I find hard to believe Scopely just “forgot about”. But intentionally or not, these are still extremely valuable and highly recommended games.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *