Yahtzee Deluxe is a very good translation of the classic dice game to mobile format. With three different versions of gameplay, a multitude of multiplayer options, and simple controls, Yahtzee Deluxe provides long-lasting entertainment for just about anyone. Once you play Yahtzee Deluxe, you might not find the need to go back to the original version of the game ever again.
Yahtzee is a dice game that challenges you to create high scores through a combination of good rolls and strategic objective selection. Each turn lets you roll the dice up to three times, during which you can freeze any of the dice so that they do not get rolled anymore. The goal is to complete the list of Yahtzee objectives with as high a score as possible. The objectives are similar to those found in card games--such as straight, full house, and three of a kind--only you're matching the numbers on the dice instead. Each turn you must select one of the goals to complete. So the goal is typically to try to get the hardest objectives out of the way first, and leave the easier ones--the ones that are more likely to come up on any given dice roll--for the end. Besides the classic game, Yahtzee Deluxe features two additional modes of gameplay: rainbow, which incorporates colored dice and thus colored objectives (such as flush or straight flush) into the mix, and duplicate, which gives multiple players the same exact dice rolls and challenges them to extract the highest possible score out of them. You can play pass-and-play up to four players with any number of computer opponents filling in.
Yahtzee Deluxe has an automatically updating scoreboard that keeps track of how your rolls score in all the different categories. Yahtzee purists might frown upon this feature, because it makes the game a little bit easier, but it's nice to have available nonetheless. The presentation is excellent, and the graphics are clear, which really make the game easy to play, if not necessarily easy to win. The sounds are equally expressive, although they might get a little tiresome after awhile. There's really very little more that could have been done to translate Yahtzee so well to the mobile format. You might miss the feel of rolling the dice, but the portable, neat, and equally entertaining Yahtzee experience makes up for it.
