Review: Farkle

This summer at my wife’s family reunion, her sister brought a game I’d never heard of (which is an unusual thing). The game consists of six regular six-sided dice and a cup to put them in and role them. Not very exciting for your $10, but I was willing to give it a shot. Farkle is a game in the “push your luck” category. I haven’t played many games in this category, but my current favorite is Can’t Stop

Flow of Play

The game simply consists of rolling the dice to accumulate points, which I’ll explain in a second. However, you DON’T want to role a Farkle, which is essentially a role where no points are available. The fun comes in pushing your luck as far as you can because if you role a Farkle, you lose all the points you’ve earned on that turn and play passes to the next person.

You start out your turn rolling all six dice. However, as you score points, the dice you score with are taken out of play leaving you with less dice, and therefore lower odds of scoring, on your next turn. If you happen to successfully role and score with ALL your dice, you get to role again with all six.

Scoring is as follows:

• Any 5 by itself scores 50 points
• Any 1 by itself scores 100 points
• Any 3-of-a-kind scores the number of the role times 100. For example, rolling 3 threes scores 300 points.
• For each role of the same number above a 3-of-a-kind scores that number times 100. For example, if you rolled 5 threes, you would score 300 for the initial three-of-a-kind, plus 300 for each additional three.
• A straight of 1 through 6 scores 1,500 points
• Three pairs in one role scores 750 points

The first person to reach 5,000 points wins.

Fun Factor

The funnest things about this game is playing it with a lively group of people. The tension and excitement can really be fun if people are into it. There is some skill involved in understanding your odds for each role. For example, the odds of being able to score are in your favor if rolling 3 dice or more. However, don’t expect to have much control over how you do. This is not a game to get upset over if you lose.

Play on Facebook

I recently discovered that you can play Farkle on Facebook. You start out playing solo trying to get your best score over the course of 10 turns. Once you play enough you “earn” the priviledge to play real-time against other players. I’ve actually had a lot more fun playing online than I did playing in person. You can see the scores of your friends and try to beat them. There’s an odd sense of pride when you get the highest score. You can see the high scores for the current week, month, and all-time. I’d recommend checking out Farkle on Facebook more than playing in real life.

Summary

In all honesty, I wasn’t very enamored with this game. Can’t Stop is a push-your-luck game with more substance and skill in decision making. However, given the simplicity and compactness of Farkle, it’s a great mobile game that could be great to take with you. In fact, if you get rid of the cup, which is unnesccesary anyway, you could fit the six dice in your pocket or purse. In fact, if you know the rules of the game, you don’t even need to buy the game. Just scrounge up 6 dice from existing games or buy six dice from a local game store for $0.50 each. There’s really no need to pay $10 or more.

When I looked at Farkle on Amazon, I found many different sets available; travel sets, “classic” sets, pocket sets, etc. The base set retails on Amazon for $9.27.

Give Farkle a try on Facebook before you buy. If you like Farkle, it could be a nice edition to your family game collection.