Solo Review: Dice Stars

What is this game about? 

Dice Stars is an abstract, number-crunching roll and write that involves only a handful of different-colored dice and a scorepad. Each turn, you will roll dice to contribute to a pool, then draft one or more of them. You can either take all dice of one number, all dice of one color, or all dice with stars on them. But these choices are tricky, and will affect your score and your flexibility during later turns of the game. The game will end if one player fills up all of the main scoring spaces on a score sheet, or when a player needs to take a die from the pool and can't because that part his or her score card is full. And the star dice offer the trickiest choice of all—each row has a different number of star spaces, and if you fill them all, you can double your score for the row. However, if you start filling up star spaces on a row but don't finish before the end of the game, you get zero points for that row. It's up to you to decide what you will risk! 

How does it play solo? 

Dice Stars plays roughly the same way for one player as it does for several, but you'll be playing against a timer/AI opponent that scores based on the dice left in the pool at the end of each of your turns. The solo game is less passive-aggressive than the multiplayer version of the game because there is no hate drafting, but the timer is tough to beat and offers a pretty good challenge. 

Overall Thoughts

Dice Stars is like an iPhone game—temporarily .addictive, but ultimately forgettable. I went through an initial period where I played this game repeatedly, and it's a quick one, which makes it easy to chain game after game together in close succession. However, the theme is so abstract that I found myself having little to latch onto after the initial rush of learning to play. I'm burnt out on Dice Stars now, and I'm not sure I can imagine myself wanting to play it again. There are a lot of good roll and write games out there, and while this one is decent, I wouldn't say it's the best. 

Do I recommend it? 

If you like roll and write games and find Dice Stars for a good price (it's currently about $16 on Amazon), it's entertaining until it wears out its welcome. 

Overall Rating: 3 stars 

Rating Scale: 
5 stars — I love it!
4 stars — I really like it. 
3 stars — I like it. 
2 stars  — It's okay. 
1 star — Meh. 

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