MegaYatzy - Dice now!

Summary

Today's test report is about a game, which goes by the names Yatzy, Yahtzee, or even Kniffel - But no matter what it's called, you should already be pretty familiar with it!
There are quite a few Yatzy games out there for our beloved Android OS - find out if Yatzy HD is the best in today's review!

Test device: LG Optimus 2x
Android version: 2.3.5
Mods: MIUI

Yatzy HD welcomes you with a simple main menu. The only important buttons there are "New game" and an icon for high scores. Tapping "New game" brings you to a screen containing text boxes for the players names. You can enter names for up to 4 players, including computer players.
If you don't want to play against a real person, you can switch players to computer players by tapping the player icon next to the text box. By tapping the icon again, you can choose the degree of difficulty.
Players with empty text boxes are deactivated.
After tapping the "New game" button again in this menu, you'll get to see the main game screen.

Throwing the dice works by simply tapping the "Throw" button. You can lock dice of your choice by tapping them before tapping the "Throw" button again. After you've made your final selection, the game will show you the possible options for your choice of dice on the left side of the game screen, which shows a table of the results. Tap on your desired place in the table and it's the next players turn.
In case it's the turn of a computer player, the game won't annoy you with boring animations how the computer scored points, but it will just show you the results right away.
This goes on and on until all players made their final score. Then, you'll be shown the final scores of each player in a list. Scores by human players will be added to your list of high scores in the main menu.

In case you want to pause the game and close the app, just press the back key on your phone and the game will prompt you to choose between “No, don’t exit”, “Yes, exit” and “Save game”.

But wait, there's more. What I didn't mention yet: There isn't only one game mode! After tapping on "New game" in the main menu and then tapping on "Settings" in the top right corner, the game will show you a few options for customizing the game.
From here, you can choose if you want to throw 5 or 6 dice. You can also set the main difficulty level to easy or hard here. If you desire, you can activate forced mode as well - What's that? I wondered that myself at first, too. Luckily, there's a help guide available. Tap on the help button in the top right corner to learn more. And a-ha: Forced mode forces the user to dice the combination in its order - Hard!
Apart from the options I already mentioned, you can choose between "New Mode" and "Classic Mode". If you choose "New Mode", players will get extra points for each combination.
If you opted to use 6 dice instead of just 5, you can also activate "Mega Yatzy" mode. This adds 4 new fields: 3 pairs, Castle, Full Straight and Tower. Here's a quick explanation of the latter three.

• Castle – The combination of 2x three dice with the same number, for example 2,2,2 and 5,5,5
• Full Straight – 1,2,3,4,5,6
• Tower – 4 dice with the same number + 2 dice with the same number

You can also activate vibration, sounds and a countdown in the settings. The countdown option let’s you see how many points you still need to get the bonus.
If the display of your device is small, you can disable the Android status bar here to gain some precious space.
In case you’d like to shake the device to throw your dice, you can opt in for that here as well.

Bottom line: In comparison with other Yatzy games I tried out, this one really is the best and most polished. It looks cool, features some cool settings to bring some diversity into the game and to make it fun again, even after playing it a lot.
If you like classic games, you should give this one a try!

Yatzy HD features a beautiful and simple user interface. I really like minimalistic styles and this game features one. Simple fonts, a clean background and a normal black-and-white table for your results.

The UI is pretty intuitive as well, with one exception: I had trouble finding a way to play against a computer, but eventually I found it.

As you'd expect because of the lack of fancy graphics, Yatzy HD runs fluidly. It didn't crash or lag at any point for me.

Yatzy HD is available for EUR 1.18 in our App Center, which is a fair price given all the options the app has.