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.

NICE

This is just a really nice app all around. You *roll dice*. It’s like real dice—nice expensive dice—actually rolling.

They behave realistically and are confidence-inspiringly for-real random: as far as I can tell, the numbers that come up do so because of actual, gut-satisfying, physics-based tumbling, not a random number generation algorithm you never fully buy into. They look beautiful and are very modifiable.

Only thing resembling a “complaint” I have is that this app is a battery hog and my iPad heats up when I use it. I do not care and wouldn’t have it any other way: beautiful, physics-based dice-rolling. If cool-running battery-sipping is top priority, find a non-physics-based app that isn’t beautiful and knock yourself out. They’re available and the good ones work fine, you just won’t like them as much.

I have suggestions/ideas, but they’re pluses and highly specific additions, not missing features worth dinging a superbly done app a half-star for.

My main suggestion is “more dice please!” I’m becoming a little bit of a DCC/MCC geek lately, so it’d be amazing to have 3, 5, 7, 14, 16, 24, 30-sided zocchi dice in the app. My expectations are managed here: I’m aware these shapes aren’t normal, simple platonics whose creation maybe isn’t a trivial matter, and developers have to consider ROI. Just an idea.

Developer Response ,

Thanks! You’ll be glad to know there’s a DCC interface mode in version 2.6.4 which adds buttons for all these dice. Also it should make your iPad a little cooler :)

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!