Review: Yahtzee (Electronic Arts)
Score:
87%
This isn't the first Yahtzee game on Windows Phone and it probably won't be the last - but it's definitely the most official, with Electronic Arts licensing the title from the official copyright holders. Which saves a lot of naming worries and means that Yahtzee here can be a no holds barred implementation of the classic dice strategy game. In fact, you get the full game plus a lot else, including one-on-one competition and a genuine Yahtzee rules enhancement, adding in extra (colour) elements. NB. At the time of writing, this is exclusive to Nokia-powered Windows Phones, though I'm sure its availability will be widened in future.
As usual for the best Windows Phone games, there's a trial mode, in this case giving you the basic game without the adventure or rule variants - still fine for a quick game, though we plumped for the full version, of course, so as to be able to report back on the complete Yahtzee experience.
This is an XBox Live title, too, meaning that, in addition to the 'extras' and 'leaderboards', there are actual gamer points up for grabs here, in the 'achievements' section, for example 5G just for getting past the intro, 5G or 10G for getting to the end of each 'adventure' level and then extra bonuses for achievement certain scores or margins of victory. In short, there's plenty to keep you motivated as an XBox Live gamer.
The game board itself is well drawn and there's good use of small fonts to indicate scores in each category, should you wish to apply the current dice there. As each category is used, it gets artistically greyed out, so it's easy to keep track of what you've got left at each stage.
As you might expect, tapping a dice moves it down to the hollow, to register it in the current turn. You then shake up the remaining dice, select any further dice to be used and then perform the final shake. Handily, if you change your mind after the second roll, in terms of what you're aiming for, you can tap on a dice in a hollow to move it back to the top red 'baize'.
You throw the dice by either shaking the phone (ugh - I can stomach tilting the phone like a steering wheel in a racing game, but shaking the phone as if it were a cup of dice is going a step too far!) or - better - by just tapping on the container. The pacing of the animations is just about perfect - it seems slow at first, but then you realise the amount of work your brain's going to have to do to manoeuvre round the board and its odds and then the small animation delays help give you time to think.
This official Windows Phone version of the classic one-board game takes things further in two ways. Firstly, 'Adventure' mode sees you being led around the world, tracking down previous Yahtzee students of your Sensei, challenging each of them to a game. Within a game, you take turns with your opponent and the side by side score-so-far is shown at the top of the screen (below, left). I didn't think adding in a two player element would work for such a traditional dice 'solitaire', but it definitely does and I found myself urging myself on and hoping for unhelpful rolls for my opponent(!)
The different locations and opponents in Adventure mode are well drawn and presented throughout. As you vanquish each, you move on to the next, until you yourself become a 'Sensei'. At which point you turn to the second innovation here, Electronic Arts' way of spicing up Yahtzee while still keeping it recognisable. Introducing 'Rainbow Yahtzee', in which, in addition to the standard scoring combinations, you're asked to match up groups of similarly coloured dice, as shown below:
As if this wasn't enough, there's also a 'Battle' mode for the traditional game, in which the upper and lower scoring panels are used to raise your score and decrement an opponent's score, respectively.
The colourful presentation and classic Yahtzee addictiveness make this game highly recommended. I've been playing the title on PDAs and smartphones for over 15 years and this is, undeniably, the slickest and clearest. The only problem with the traditional game is that each hand is standalone, and the Adventure mode here overcomes this nicely, giving you a clear opponent each time and a goal, a reason to concentrate and do well.
Right now, you can grab this Nokia exclusive from the Nokia Collection on your Lumia handset, or through a direct link to the Windows Store. Yahtzee isn't the cheapest game in the Store, but it's professionally done and worth every penny.
Reviewed by Steve Litchfield at