Yahtzee Adventures

I commute. Every day I get up at the last possible moment before my commuting buddy arrives, and usually I’m brushing my teeth or packing my lunch when I receive his text, “Here.” Likewise for him, I’m sure. A few months back he introduced me to Yahtzee Adventures, by Electronic Arts, by way of sound. It was my day to drive (we alternate) and from his side I heard the sweet sound of dice being shaken tossed out of a cup and onto, presumably, a thick slab of lacquered oak. I was obviously mistaken because we don’t drive a woody, nor do we carry dice… Enter the ever-present iPhone. I inquired and he opened my eyes to the wonderful world of Yahtzee and it’s various incarnations. He explained the game to me and I caught on, quickly developing my own strategy and attempting to match, and beat his high scores. The game features a help section, but I had a mentor, so I chose to forgo it.

Yahtzee Adventures features multiple scenarios: Adventure – a tongue-in-cheek kind of round the world Yahtzee marathon where each region has it’s particular game (and character… more later); Play Now – the basic Yahtzee game, one player; Custom – you can choose the game type (Classic, Rainbow, Duplicate and Battle), number of players (1-4) and whether your opponent is human or computer. It also allows you to view your awards and statistics, and check on the status of your awards and various challenges. I must say that I was very impressed to see this amount of intricacy and creativity surrounding a relatively simple game. Where other iPhone apps burn out after a short period of time, Yahtzee Adventures becomes more interesting. For example, the game features a number of characters you can choose to play against. If you play Adventure scenario, you get to know each character and can later play to their strengths and weaknesses (my favorite is Lucille – who looks like she should have a cigarette in her hand, not sunglasses). Okay, I may be stretching it a bit with the characters, but EA put a lot of care into the game, and it shows.

Yahtzee Adventures Lucillle Chatacter Biography

This is by far the least buggy and smoothest game I have played. It doesn’t crash, the design is slick, the sound effects are crisp and the soundtrack is, well, it’s not bad. Even other EA titles, such as Tiger Woods PGA TOUR, have problems such as not opening, or opening and crashing. When it comes to technical achievements, the app is essentially flawless. One particular feature that will go unnoticed, but that is very nice is an auto-save feature. If you receive a call or exit the app by way of the home button, it automatically saves your progress and asks if you want to resume your previous game upon your return.

Soon after I caught up to speed, my buddy and I took our games to the couch street and offered no apologies when going for the sweet sound of a Yahtzee. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t feature wireless multiplayer, so we had to pass-n-play. For me, this is the only minor let down in an otherwise brilliantly executed application.