Dicewars

Title screen.

Dicewars is a simple strategy video game developed and published by Gamedesign as a browser game in 2006. The game uses a combat system similar to that of the board game Risk, but on a randomly generated board supporting 2-8 players. It is a single-player-only game and uses AI opponents. The game was originally written in Flash, but was later rewritten in JavaScript for HTML5.

Personal

I don't remember how I came across this game, but it was no doubt on one of the various blogs I frequented in the early 2000s. It was either a direct link to this game, or through one of the many other Flash games developed by Gamedesign.

This game is freely available online. I have beaten each opponent count.

Review

4	5	3	1	8

Best Version: Browser (HTML5)

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• The game is short, but enjoyable. You can crank out a game in about 15 minutes.
• The game is attractive looking and the interface is well-designed.
• The rapid-paced animation makes it clear what is going on as you play.
• At the end of the game, you can watch the history of the entire game as a replay.

Bad

• After playing the game for a little while you will learn how easy it is to exploit the AI.
• There are no difficulty settings, so, once you understand how the AI plays, you can pretty much win every time you're given a fair starting position.
• Rather than write a better AI, the designers have the opponents gang up on you once you control about half the board.
• Due to the randomness of the game, and the increased likelihood of being picked last on the first turn, you will occasionally lose the game before you even get a chance to move when playing with a large number of opponents.
• The game doesn't evenly distribute the dice at the beginning of the game, usually some of the colors will have fewer dice than the others, and be in worse positions.
• Although the visual animation is interesting to watch, after you've played several times, it just slows down the process, and it would be nice if there were an option to turn it off.
• Though it may be confirmation bias, the dice rolls feel like they're weighted against the player. I've had massive leads lost by a long run of low rolls followed by high rolls from my opponents, but I rarely notice such runs in my favor.
• I wish the player was allowed to pick their color.

Ugly

• Nothing.

Media

• 

  The start of a new game.

Representation

Strong female character?	Fail	There are no characters.
Bechdel test?	Fail	There are no characters.
Strong person of color character?	Fail	There are no characters.
Queer character?	Fail	There are no characters.

Links

 

• gamedesign.jp/flash/dice/dice.html - Original Flash game.