Yahtzee Adventures Game for iPhone and iPod Touch

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Dice game Yahtzee has enjoyed many incarnations over the years ranging from the original board game and TI-99/4A computer version to clones and handheld devices including the PalmOS, Pocket PC and now the iPhone.

Electronic Arts brings the game to the iPhone and iPod Touch. The company makes the most out of the iPhone and iPod Touch graphical interface by providing the game with superb graphics.

As soon as you open the game, you have the option of turning on game music and SFX. This way you don’t embarrass yourself – should you forget whether the sound is on – if you’re sitting in a quiet room. In either case, the sound becomes tiresome in a short time with its high pitch.

Options let you adjust the levels for music, sound effects, and shake. What better game to have a shake feature? Shake the dice. However, sometimes you find your dice rolling before you’re ready. You can play it without shaking the iPhone and iPod Touch. Tap on the dice can and it shakes away.

Extras include awards (5), biographies (10), challenges (14) and statistics, which show your highest scores for the different game types, win ratio, and Yahtzees (all five dice are the same number).

Adventure takes advantage of what casual games industry has been doing for a while – turning a basic game into an adventure. Here you play against the different characters and as you defeat one, you move to the next. You can select the character which ranges from Flavius from Gypsy Camp and Maria from Grand Carnival to Kylie from the Outback and Mustafa for Souk’s Market.

Play Now takes you right to the classic game if trying to score the highest score possible. No opponents appear in this game. It’s all about seeing what you can do.

Custom Play comes with the following options:

  • Classic: original game, no special effects.
  • Battle: play against characters from all over the world. Players start with 100 points and try to bring each other to 0 points. Players can even reuse previously used categories once they fill back up.
  • Duplicate: Players get same dice. They won’t make the same decision, so it’s great to see how different the outcome could be from the same dice.
  • Rainbow: This introduces new categories for you to try to get with colored dice on top of the traditional Yahtzee categories. You can get a full house twice in rainbow: once with numbers such as 33666 and another with colors such as red red blue blue blue. The other rainbow categories call for getting five of the same color die.

The downside, aside from annoying music, is that it’s easy to tap the wrong game or item. If you end up in a game you don’t want to play, exiting it means forfeit even though you haven’t played yet. The game has some delays in loading portions of the game.

Electronic Arts provides a version of Yahtzee that works beautifully on the iPhone. You get your money’s worth with all the available options.