Farkle Dice Game

Supplier: SmartBox Design
Product: Farkle
Cost: $14.95 (but see the supplier's Homepage for a $2 discount)

Thanks to Kevin Doel of Talon PR for providing the review program







Introduction

Pocket PC gaming has, for me, always been a bit of an enigma. I love the concept of Adventure Games and RPG's, but due to a mixture of ineptitude and impatience, rarely get beyond the early phases without resorting to cheats and walkthroughs. And I hate "shoot-em-ups" and "space adventures". So that leaves me with games involving logic and word or number manipulation.

Previous favourites have included Resco Mathgame (sadly no longer available), Yachtzee, Mastermind, and even the ubiquitous Jawbreaker.

So the announcement of Farkle, which I have to admit I'd never heard of before, provoked that frisson of anticipation, that this might be a game I could enjoy. And for the impatient among you who always scroll down to the Conclusion, I'm happy to say that, on the whole, my expectations have been fulfilled admirably.

What is Farkle?

Farkle is essentially a turn based dice rolling game, which can be played with either human or computerised opponents. The objective is to be the highest scorer once you any of the other players has attained a predefined score. Scoring is achieved by a combination of dice rolls in each turn, and is relatively simple to master. A typical game lasts about 10 minutes, so it is great for whiling away spare moments, or playing a succession of games if more time is available. I'll talk about scoring, and strategy later.



Installation

The Farkle executable is 629Kb in size, and installs quickly via Activesync. It will happily run from Main Memory or a Storage card. As it was designed for WM2003, during installation WM2003SE devices will display a message warning that the program may not run properly, but this can safely be ignored as long as you don't try and run Farkle in landscape mode. The game shortcut is placed in the Programs/Games folder.

The registered version costs $14.95, though there is currently a $2 reduction via the website. If you want to try before you buy, the evaluation version is fully functional, but limited to 15 games, which seems to be a very fair offer, allowing over 2 hours of play. Registration involves entering a code into the registation box selected from the "Game" menu, and is linked to the device's Owner Name.



Setup and Playing for the First Time

Farkle is a turn based game, so when you first play, you can enter your name in the "Human" box. You can then select a combination of up to 5 further players, either human or AI based. The AI names are not editable.

The game includes some help files, accessible from the menu at any time. This has subjects on How to Play, Scoring, and Strategies which are self explanatory.

There are 2 further aids- Playing Tips and Scoring Dice hints.
Playing tips are turned on by default for your first 2 games, and seem to turn themselves off for the 3rd game onwards, which shows thoughtful programming. These are text box pop-ups which give guidance and information on playing decisions, and play continues once the text box's OK button is tapped.
Scoring Dice Hints are small arrows which appear above any dice which can score points in the current throw. These are always on by default. Either of these aids can be turned on or off in the Preferences screen. The only other "Preferences" option is the sound volume slider and "Mute" tickbox. You can also quickly mute/unmute the sound with a small icon on the main playing screen.
Sound is not a major component of this game, nor is it required. There are some discreet sound effects during game start, dice rolling, and end of turn, but thats about it.
Apart from player selection, the Game Setup screen has options for "Break-in" score (the minimum score to begin playing), "Play to" score, being the score after which play ceases, "Score 3 Pairs" on or off and "Must Roll if all Dice Scored" on or off.




Setup Screens

Help Screens

Playing Tips


Objectives and Scoring

As I mentioned earlier, each player scores points by adding up the scoring dice during each turn. The turn ends when there are no scoring dice, or when the player "passes" to the next player. Once any player has reached a predefined score (10,000 by default) at the end of his turn, each other player then has one more turn, to try and get the highest score.

Farkle uses 6 standard dice, and scores are achieved as follows:

Single Die -
1 Spot 100
5 Spot 50

Combinations -
Three 2 Spot 200
Three 3 Spot 300
Three 4 Spot 400
Three 5 Spot 500
Three 6 Spot 600
Three 1 Spot 1,000
Three Pairs 500
Six-Dice Straight 1,000

If you fail to score in any throw, thats called a Farkle at which point your turn ends and you lose any points previously scored during that turn. 3 Farkles in a row result in the loss of 1000 points.

Opening Play

Commencing Play

So, to commence play, tap the "Roll" button, to throw the dice. Once you have thrown, you select the scoring dice you want to keep; their points are shown in the counter. You can then throw the remaining dice, or "Pass" if you prefer. If you score with any of the dice in this throw, the process repeats and the counter adds the current score. To roll again, you must select at least one scoring die in a throw, which means that each successive throw has fewer dice, so increasing the chance of a Farkle, thus losing all the points gained on that turn.
You can't aggregate scores from one throw to the next; for example if you keep "1" on the first throw, then throw 2 "1's" on the next throw, your aggregate score would be 300, not 1000.
If you score with, and select, all the dice during a turn, you can then throw them all again, keeping the previous points, but if you get a Farkle, you still lose all the points for the whole turn. There is a game option to force a player to throw again if all the dice are scored.

First Throw- lucky one!

Second Round

Strategy

Farkle is a game of luck and skill. The luck comes in the random nature of the dice, but skill and judgement comes in deciding which scoring dice to keep, and which to throw again. As the game progresses, you may decide to take some risks, or to play safe and accumulate points more steadily.

A nice feature of the AI opponents is that they all have different playing characteristics, so Banzai Bob will usually play the odds, but take a few chances, while Steady Stan will be more conservative.

Once you are getting close to the target figure, the strategy becomes more tricky. Remember that once a player has reached the target, all the other players have a further turn. So if your score looks like only just achieving the total, and an opponent is somewhere close, you might be better to score less on that turn then pass, hoping the opponent will only scrape the total, giving you a chance of beating him on your last throw. Obviously the odds on single dice are less important in this phase of the game, so an opponent may have nothing to lose by rolling the last die. If it comes up a "1" or "5" then he will score and have the opportunity of rolling all again. On my first play, I was the first to 10000, and one of my opponents was on 9900, but he then went on to throw caution to the wind and scored 2000 on his last turn!
Its not as easy as it looks to win. I've now played about 15 games, and have only managed to win twice! This is where the compulsive nature of the game becomes apparent- just one more try!!

You don't want too many of these!


3 Farkles and you lose your turn




Finishing the Game

As Outlined earlier, once any player has reached the target, the others have one further chance to try and beat the score. In this game Banzai Bob has scored 10850 points, but both the others got Farkles, so Bob was the winner!



Summary

For
Easy installation
Quick to pick up the basics
Good help and playing hints
Simple, effective graphics.
Compulsive

Against
Unable to control the speed of play of AI opponents
? ability to use WM 5.0 devices (awaiting advice from developer)




Conclusion
I really like this game. It is very simple, with an easy to understand screen layout and no superfluous graphics or sound. The only animation is the dice rolling, but this does not detract in any way from the game's appearance.
Farkle is easy to learn, but difficult to master, and I'm sure it could quickly become compulsive.
Quibbles? My only real concern is the speed at which the AI player's turns proceed. There is no way to pause/continue an AI player's turn, so reducing learning opportunities in the early stages by examining their decisions and scores. It would be nice to have an option to either pause a player, or to have a Play Speed control, so you can more easily see the dice rolls of AI players.
Another tiny quibble is that the Score Chart needs each player to be selected from a drop box. It would be nice to see a list of comparative scores/game results on one screen.

Farkle is a very good Dice Rolling game. It won't appeal to action gamers, or those who like "block puzzle" type games, but it will suit those who like to spend spare moments with something requiring a little thought. It is even suitable for family play, with the option of up to 6 human participants.

4WM Rating 95%