Dice by PCalc 4+

A dice app worth paying for

I’ve put my physical dice away after getting this app. I think the quality of the graphics, haptics, and physics really sets this apart from the other free options on the App Store that I had tried. I never really liked the two-dimensional or text-based dice simulators because I think part of the excitement in landing a roll comes from watching the die spin and turn, sometimes just barely missing the number you wanted or feared. With physics-based dice, you still get that!

This app’s option to save dice sets (allowing you to automatically roll dice combinations with the appropriate modifiers already added) for common rolls has made combat in DnD 5E faster and easier for me. The app‘a feature set also makes it convenient to roll with advantage or disadvantage, which I’ve really come to appreciate.

All in all, I’ve got what I feel is as close a representation of physical dice as one can get. As far as I’m concerned, they difference is that these are as fair as random (or pseudo-random) can get, and for only $2!! That’s a lot better than you can see about the vast majority of mass-produced dice, which typically favor certain numbers over others because of the quality of production.

One stupid complaint.

EDIT: I love you. Thank you.

I love this app. It’s a handy replacement for carrying around actual dice for those impromptu games of D&D. It has great visuals, and I can keep flicking the dice just because. I love the customization too. The only problem is, and here is my one stupid complaint, that there isn’t enough variety of colors (especially green). As a weirdo who collects mostly green dice, I was hoping for more in that color pallet. Same goes for purple too. There’s 4 different blues and 3 different reds, but the rest get stuck with only one. There are dice that have two tones of color but you can only choose one color for them and it looks off. Please consider updating that part of the app (and maybe for your calculator app too, lime green is not the greatest pick). Thank you for your efforts.

Developer Response ,

I’ve added more green tints in 1.6, and you can now set the text colour separately - I hope this helps!

I give it a 4.998 but had to round up.

The real time physics don’t always roll the dice realistically but I’m guessing that the random number generator is much better.

The big down fall though is that the tray doesn’t come in forest, dungeon, cave, pub and other settings. This has unsettled me very much as I would expect those in a dice program for dragons and dungeons.

I also quite expected to see goblin hands or dragon claws grabbing onto the dice and rolling them when I flicked my fingers or clicked on the re-roll button which totally ruins the realism of this dragons and dungeons dice game.

I’m hoping people can tell but I’m having fun in my review. The physics of the rolling dice doesn’t seem all that realistic but it does have everything else and is done very well. But if they are looking for something to do (just in case they are bored or between D&D games, that dragons & dungeons to you and you and you, then that is something they could work on. God knows that I would be of no help with that. But everything else is great!