Casual Fridays: Roll the Bones

Welcome to Casual Fridays!  This is your fun Friday post where you get reviews of flash games, mobiles games and anything else that’s quick, and fun around the net.  We’re moving to a bi-weekly format so that I can make sure to get them out in time, but that might mean there’s going to be a few more games on the review table rather than the standard two or three per post.  There are a sea of games out there, we’re hoping to provide you with a life raft to find the games you want to play.

This week, we’re looking at that old chestnut called dice and why on earth would someone want to make a flash game that was just all about the dice?  Find out when we look at Zilch, Lock ‘n’ Roll and Brain Bones and we’ll see if anyone can get where I got the title from.  If you guess, I’ve got a big bag of Kudos for you.  They’re delicious.

Personally, I love dice games.  Yes they are random, yes they are risky but it doesn’t pretend to be anything else.  Zilch, also known as Dice 10000, is a really fun, addictive game that will suck a lot of time away.  The premise of this game is that you roll a set of six, six sided dice, and depending on what you roll you score points differently.  I can give you the run down of what the scoring system is but you can find the scoring system at the Dice 10000 Wiki page and that’s not really what I want to talk about.  First of all, I like this game because it’s got a really nice interface when it comes to the dice.  They look like a bunch of old wooden dice you would have found in an old Yahtzee set, or the kind you get in a box of Settlers of Catan.  I love how the interface was created with that torn paper look, to the point where the computer opponent has the clean edge and you have the edge with all the perforations.

Like most versions, it’s got the dice on the screen that can be selected, as well as the quick options which allows you to just mass select any point totals you see.  They really helps when you’ve never played the game before.  There are three levels of difficulty when you need to play by yourself, there is a hotseat two player version, and a ‘play online’ version where you can play other people who have logged into the game.  I love those options, but with any type of unknown online play I recommend caution as with anything else.

There are even things for those who like achievements.  There are 120 different achievements which range from losing badly to long win streaks without a single zilch.

Random Value Judgement Rating: [1] [1] [1] [1] [1] [1] – 8000 points!  Yay highest score possible on a single roll!

Brain Bones is a lovely little puzzle game that uses dice.  Here you get a set of 5 dice and you need to turn them into two pairs and a die that’s going to be left out.  These combinations are important because that die that’s left out will get discarded and you can only discard 4 out of the 6 numbers on the dice.  Once you discard enough of one number, the game is over.  The pairs that you made?  Well they’ll get added together and scored.  The first time you make a pair it will cost you 100 points, and once you make the 5th combination that pair will finally start to get you points.  It rewards you for clever play, by making the same combinations again and again, but there will be times when you get stuck with a set of five dice that you don’t want at all.

The game takes about 10 to 15 minutes to play, maybe longer because I like to keep pressing the “Play This Combination” button to get new dice pretty quickly, and you’ll find yourself playing it again and again.  You’ll think that you’ve got it made and that nothing can get in your way, and then you’ll get that set of dice that no matter how long you sit down and try to figure out a way to make it work, it won’t and you’ll be down another 100 or 200 points.

The look is cute, quick and clean.  Seriously, the skulls are pretty cute.  I have filled the whole scoring page with skulls just because I thought they were cute.

Random Value Judgement Rating: 8E 8E 8E 8E 8E – 5 Skulls, for -100 points each!  Time to make more combinations!

Another puzzle game that uses dice, I first came across this game at the Android Market and was amused enough to check it out on my phone.  Another random dice and combination game, but this one focuses more on where you place the dice.  Also, they are only numbered from 1 to 4 despite your mind thinking that they’re a cube.  I guess it’s harder to do this if you were using tetrahedrons but I digress.

Before I get into the game I will point out that there will be people who can’t play this game.  There is no way to distinguish the colours on the dice other than by colour.  That means for those folks who are colour blind this game might frustrate you more than anything else.  Especially considering that colour combinations are a big part of how the game is scored.

Out of all of them this is my least favourite dice, or should I say dice-ish, game.  If things go badly, they will go badly rather quickly since you only get four rolls if you can’t manage to clear any of the dice that are on the screen.  That’s maddingly frustrating, even though you do get a wild card ‘joker’ if you manage to score enough points which can help clear the board.

Random Value Judgement Rating: 1, 2, 3, 4, j – the 4 numbers you get to play with and the joker.

Thanks for reading checking out these dice games.  I hope you feel that they’re worth their time in the limelight, it’s their universal dream.  Remember to leave any requests for reviews in the comments section or email me at koipond at borderhouseblog dot com!

Related posts:

Casual Fridays – Just as long as they aren’t called Skynet …Casual Fridays: I Love Jumping RobotsCasual Fridays: Evolving Platform EditionCasual Fridays: The Balloons EditionCasual Fridays 03 – Planes, Planes and Planes

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