Parents' Guide to Yahtzee with Buddies Dice

While some board and card games work well on mobile devices, this dice game doesn't translate well to the virtual realm. In Yahtzee with Buddies Dice, you get to play the classic dice game against other people online. On the surface, it seems like that old familiar game you've played for years. In order to score the most points and win, you have to roll five dice and save the ones that are the same number, then roll again to replace the ones you didn't keep. For instance, if your first roll has two 3s, and you save them, and then your second roll of the remaining three dice has two more 3s, you can then submit the four 3s for 12 points. You can also get points for pulling off such Poker combos as 4 of a kind and Full House. And, of course, five of a kind is Yahtzee (and 50 points).

But while this works the same as a physical game of Yahtzee, it lacks the charm of the real thing. Half the challenge of Yahtzee is rolling the dice, something you lose when the computer randomly picks them for you. It also doesn't help that, by playing this virtually, you can't make your opponent play their turn. While testing the game for this review, there were routine times where you could wait 5, 10, even 15 minutes for people to take their turn, even if you were initially challenged by the other player to begin with. It's a good thing you can play multiple games at the same time. But even then, this doesn't work as well as it could, because the menus aren't very intuitive. When it comes to this game, It's better to stick to the real thing than play more Yahtzee with Buddies Dice.