Dice Academy Review

Reviewed by Louise Totton

The kids have now broken up for school – there is an air of humongous excitement in our house and it’s all because the kids are now planning on their brains turning to mush over the next few weeks and are expecting to do precisely nothing to keep their minds active. Well, fortunately for their ever-developing grey matter, I have other plans, and they come in the form of a few games to keep their minds working, rapid recall in full flow and boredom at bay!

This weekend, we have been trying out Dice Academy from Blue Orange. Dice Academy is a small, dice-based game the comes in a magnetically closing box and is perfect for taking out and about with you. The game is for 2-6 players, aged 8+, and the box suggests the game takes around 15 minutes to play. The box contains 10 coloured dice and an instruction sheet – that’s it, because like all of the most successful games, Dice Academy is incredibly simple to learn, to set up and to play!

As I said, the box simply contains 10 dice. There are five differently coloured dice (green, pink, red, yellow and blue) depicting themes, and five equivalently coloured dice with letters on. The first thing to do is decide on an agreed winning score. The instructions suggest 10 for a quick game, 20 for a slightly longer game and 30 for a normal, competitive game. The rules are very simple – the game is played by sitting around a table and someone first rolling the five theme dice. After taking a moment to make sure that everyone knows what the themes are (for example, red might be a city, green might be something square, yellow might be a job, blue might be a land animal and pink might be a vehicle), the letter dice are then rolled. This is where the fun starts! The players then have to try to pair as many theme dice with letter dice of a different colour as they can.

So in our example, if they were looking to pair something with the pink vehicle die, they would have to come up with a vehicle beginning with P, E, V or F – not L as that is the same colour dice. So they might shout out VAN, but LORRY wouldn’t be allowed. Once a player has shouted out an acceptable pairing, they take those two dice from the table and have scored a point. The game gets more difficult as letters and themes are removed from the table.

After all of the points have been won (or if everyone agrees that there are no more acceptable answers on the table), the number of points each player has won that round is recorded and the dice are rolled again. This continues until the agreed target has ben reached and one of the players is declared the winner.

The game says it is suitable for ages 8+ – I have a 7-year-old and a 10-year-old, and even the younger one managed this one really well and thoroughly enjoyed it. Obviously, she had some gaps in her knowledge that made it a bit harder – cities, monuments and singers were more of a struggle for her than they were for the eldest or for the adults, but for the most part, she could manage it just fine. The game is fantastic for encouraging their rapid recall skills, as well as really getting them to think and getting creative with their thoughts – something liquid beginning with V was tricky for a while until my youngest came up with Vimto, and she was also the one who managed to come up with a song beginning with H – Hokey Cokey!

The quick playing, shouting out games are always great fun for the school holidays as they let the kids expend a bit of their energy without running around the house like loons. This is also a good one for them to play when they have their friends over, as we found it does work best if the kids are playing with their peers. Having said that, it’s definitely not just a kids’ game, and my other half and I have played quite a few rounds after the kids have gone to bed!

We are really pleased with this little game, and it will be going in my handbag with us as a standby for car journeys and visits to family over the summer. It’s great fun, educational and very portable – ideal for the school holidays!

Rating: 5/5

RRP: £12.99

Available to buy from Amazon here.