FaceMe Backgammon 12+

Excellent Gammon Experience

Aside from a few little quirks, like not saving the game state permanently, this is a fine Backgammon experience. I appreciate the quick play and the choice of board designs. The doubling decisions need a bit of work but the rest of the AI is pretty good!

Rolls are off and logo isn’t quite right

Fun game but logic is off, numerous times the computer keeps an open chip instead of going in, when it should do that. It must know I’m
Not going to hit it or roll what I need. You would most certainly go in your side then leave an open chip. So I’m convinced that computer knows what roll is coming. Also when I play higher ranked opponent or when I’m the higher ranked opponent they get better rolls. Almost guaranteed the higher ranked opponent will get the roll to hit open opponent to put them on the bar, then almost assuredly opponent will then roll a double on a spot that they can’t get in on. I’ve played way too many games and this happens at a statistically impossible number. Very frustrating. I know the developer will say this doesn’t happen, but it absolutely does. Can someone develop an app that doesn’t cheat?

Developer Response ,

This issues has been fixed in the latest release. The controls were not disabled, just hard to see due to the new dark mode in iOS. Worked fine in light mode.

Good interface but definitely cheats

I wasn’t sure if suspicions of cheating were observation bias or not so I captured stats on hundreds of games. One thing I tracked is not the number of doubles but the quality of the doubles. While somewhat subjective we can all agree that double sixes bearing off is much better than doubles sixes when getting off the bar with six blocked. I rated hundreds of examples and computer scored much better. I also tracked how often, based on points covered, the odds of getting of getting off the bar in the FIRST attempt which is critical to avoid the opponent setting up a position. Based on over 500 cases, the computer is successful at least 15% more often.
The sample sizes are statistically significant.

Have played this game for years but would prefer a game where I don’t have to plan for the computer getting lucky rolls at higher odds than normal.

Developer Response ,

While we can assure you that the game not not cheat in any way, we've also implemented the Roll Again feature which allows you to roll again, either for the computer or for yourself, when luck makes the game less enjoyable than you want it to be.