Greed

Greed is a classic dice/drinking game. Pretty sure I played it with my mom when I was younger (not the drinking part). There are different scoring variations across history, depending on if you’re playing the traditional Danish game “Grådige” or the mass-market one that comes in a little green box at your local Target – some use five dice, some use six, sometimes you can get more points for four- or five-of-a-kind, occasionally there are some Yahtzee-ish stipulations like points for scoring a Full House. This one on Playdate uses six dice, has triples and six-of-a-kind scoring rules but none for four- or five-of-a-kind, and has hotseat play with up to four players that you can rename in-game. Or you can play against the computer! What matters most is that you roll a lot of 1’s and 5’s, and you don’t get too greedy and lose it all. The tutorial explains everything clearly and concisely.

There’s a sort of constant running narrator telling you whose turn it is and when it’s time to pull the dice you want to keep. It makes the actual rolling of the dice (done with the crank or automatically if the crank is docked) a little clunky. The pass and play option is nice, since there aren’t really that many games on Playdate that offer that, but a big part of actually playing dice is everyone being able to see the action and react in real time together. I played Yahtzee with the in-laws over our 4th of July vacation, and seeing their souls dissolve in real time as I rolled my second and third Yahtzees of the game made the whole thing worth it. It’s hard to have that with the tiny Playdate screen. Maybe would be good on a plane, where rolling a loud handful of dice is seen as an etiquette no-no? (I wouldn’t put it past some of the people I’ve seen on planes, though.)

Greed on Playdate is exactly what it says – no more, no less. It keeps track of your stats, but it’s not like you can use playing against the computer as practice to get better for your weekly family game night. It’s almost all luck-based, like most dice games. It works, and it does what it came to do, but playing it alone made me feel kind of… lonely. And instead of pass and play, I’d rather roll real dice with friends and family so everyone can see what’s happening at the same time and react together without having to peek over each other’s shoulders at a tiny black-and-white screen. Still, if you specifically want a straight dice game on your Playdate, this is it!

(Released July 10, 2022, on Itch and June 20, 2023, on Catalog. Copy provided by developer.)