Friday, September 29, 2023

Mobile Friday - Dice Kingdom - An Accessible Tower Defense Game Playable With One Hand


For Mobile Friday this week i tried out Dice Kingdom – Tower Defense on iPhone 14 Pro. this game is from 111% and is also out on #Android.

I wanted to play this game because i was curious how the dice element would work in a tower defense game. i had played Crystal Defenders not too long ago, https://youtu.be/CPxDtTKcWJY, and even though it's an older game in a different style the basic elements between the two of them seemed very similar.

So the dice are your units. they have different types. at first these are elemental, but as i progressed in this video i unlocked rarer types like sniper. so far, that's fairly typical for a tower defense game. the cool way that the dice are used is that the number on them reveals what level they are. it's a very easy way of visually seeing the levels of your units. Other than that, the dice theme seems more of an aesthetic choice rather than something that affects gameplay. 

the biggest surprise for me is how accessible the game is to play. it has useful tutorials, you're able to click on the dice and get a video showing how they attack, and it guides you very well through the opening stages of the game. it doesn't feel patronising either. a very cool way the game is accessible is managing your dice units. the game shows this in a tutorial, too. you can press a button and the game selects the best team and puts them on the map. a second button clears the map of your units. the final button auto merges your units. for example, two level 1 fire dice can be merged into one level 2 dice. When you can't merge the units any more, you hit the first button and your best team is placed onto the map. 

Whilst i was playing the game i realized that i was only using one hand. the game smartly uses the space available on the screen. there's nothing up top that the dynamic island could get in the way off, and it's the same at the bottom. everything i needed to click was down in the lower half of the screen and before long i was playing the game singlehanded. this coupled with how sort each of the monster raids are make this a great game for commuting. 

I recommend players get Dice Kingdom. it's very accessible, easy to play one handed, and not a bad introduction to the tower defence genre. the game has other game modes to help pass the time and by the end of this video i hadn't unlocked them all. there are a lot of dice units to unlock and find so it's a game you can come back to again and again.

(Version 1.1.0 Played)