Dice Tavern: Farkle Roguelike has me questioning everything Yahtzee taught me

Even when I was a kid, I knew the benefit of stepping away from a screen every now and then and interacting with other human beings. One of my favorite things to do was play board and dice games. Yahtzee was always a favorite of mine, because you don’t necessarily need other people to play it. So you can imagine how happy I was to be introduced to Farkle. 

Farkle is a traditional dice game with highly debated origins that predates Yahtzee by potentially centuries, and you might be familiar with it if you’ve played Kingdom Come: Deliverance. I hadn’t, so when the developers of Dice Tavern: Farkle Roguelike reached out to me about their game, I soon discovered something joyous and highly addictive. 

A modern spin on Farkle

Dice Tavern: Farkle Roguelike is a game developed by Cavi Studio, and it adds roguelike elements to the already addictive dice game. The game pits you against increasingly difficult foes, challenging you to earn a certain number of points in fewer and fewer rounds. The first few rounds are fairly simple, requiring only 1,500 or so points to win, but eventually you need to get 24,000 or more to defeat your opponent. 

Thankfully, there are multiple types of upgrades you can unlock to make your runs better. You can purchase new dice using your winnings, many of which are fixed to favor 1s or 5s to aid with the basic ruleset of Farkle (1s and 5s are your only basic winning faces). You can buy badges that affect the entire roll or boost your banked score, as well as weights that fix dice in your favor. 

Admittedly, there are a lot of different upgrades in Dice Tavern: Farkle Roguelike, and I haven’t even come close to figuring out why some of them are useful. I’m not entirely sure why you’d want to make 2s or 6s more common by weighting the dice or purchasing new ones that have that effect, but I am a complete novice, so I’m probably missing something there. 

Altering my brain chemistry

Look, as a 30-something-year-old who grew up playing Yahtzee, I’m pretty stuck in my ways in terms of seeing dice and knowing what numbers make up the best combinations. Transitioning from that mindset into one that vaguely understands Farkle took me a few rounds, but once I figured out what I was doing and left my Yahtzee bias behind, I quickly became hooked on Farkle. 

Dice Tavern: Farkle Roguelike adds a sense of accomplishment to the game that helps a ton. Sure, rolling real-life dice and getting the right numbers is satisfying on its own, but adding in the progression of a roguelike, the “numbers go brrr” effect, and the constant improvement boosts the level of satisfaction you feel when winning by a massive degree. 

Of course, on the flip side, losing can also feel more frustrating, especially when RNG decides that one of your opponents should have the most infuriating buff. One that I encountered was effectively “you can only bank 500 or more.”  This would be fine at late-game stages when you’ve piled on the upgrades, but when you’re struggling to make that target each round, it feels like the odds are stacked against you. 

But that’s the nature of roguelikes, right? You can’t win every run. 

Dice Tavern: Farkle Roguelike is set to release on September 8, 2026, so you don’t have long to wait if you want to dive in and get hooked on Farkle. There’s a demo to play in the meantime if you want some practice or to get familiar with the upgrades.