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Farkle
September 22, 2004
Farkle is a fast-paced new dice game from Smart Box Design. The rules are fairly simple; players take turns rolling six dice. A roll of one or six, three of a kind, or a “straight” from one to six score varying amounts of points, from 50 to over 1000. At least one of the dice must be a “scoring” die with a roll of one or six, in order to continue. Choose which dice you want to keep and roll the others again, until you decide to pass. If at any point during your turn you don’t have at least one scoring die, you “Farkle”— you lose all the points accumulated during that turn, and your turn immediately ends. Farkle three turns in a row, and you’ll lose 1000 points. That can be pretty painful, because the object of the game is to be the first to reach 10,000 points. When that happens, the rest of the players in the game have the opportunity to have one last turn, hoping to get the highst score and snatch victory from the player who reached 10,000 points first.
There are several options available for the game, including the number of players, from one to four. You can play with your friends or select various AI “characters” to play against. The fact that you can enter your own name is a nice personal touch; when you first start the game you’ll see that your HotSync name has already been entered automatically. You can also choose whether or not a “break in” score of 350 to 1,000 points is required on the first roll of the dice for each player, and whether you want to play to 5,000 or 10,000 points, which indirectly controls the length of each game. Full instructions and help are also included so that you can quickly learn how to play the game.
The graphics are absolutely gorgeous on my Tapwave Zodiac— Farkle supports hi res 320x320 (but not hi res plus 320x480) screens. The sound effects are quite nice too— appropriate and fun without being annoying. There’s a sound for the dice roll, to signal the start of each player’s turn, and one for the dreaded “Farkle” when a player loses their turn. You can turn them off in the preferences menu if you don’t like them, or you can choose a lower volume level. The gameplay screen is well laid-out and everything is very quick and easy to understand.
Farkle is a fun, fast-moving game that I found myself enjoying much more than I expected. I’m typically a card or puzzle/arcade type of girl, but the dice-rolling fun of Farkle has proven rather hard to tear myself away from. Farkle requires 656K of space on your handheld device, and supports Palm OS 3.5 or higher. You can get a free trial from the Smart Box Design web site, or purchase a full license for $14.95.
PocketGoddess Rating for Farkle: 
