« Previous post
Next post »

December 17, 2006

I Spent Sunday Evening Playing kdice

Michael Arrington

33 comments »

kdice is a free multiplayer online game that is similar to Risk, and I’ve just wasted an entire evening playing it (and mostly losing). It was created by Ryan Dewsbury using the Google Web Toolkit and has a Flash interface. Ryan also created gpoker, an Ajax Texas holdem poker game and one of the first applications built with the Web Toolkit. We covered gpoker here back in July.

kdice is a lot like the Risk board game, although the games go very quickly. Like gpoker, kdice also has real time chat between players. Not much else to say about it - it’s a fun application that makes me remember the hours and hours I spent playing Risk as a kid. If anyone knows of any other good online Risk-inspired games (besides Grand Strategy), let me know.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 17th, 2006 at 9:53 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

  1. rxbbx - news, gadgets and other fun stuff » Kdice, Risk-like Strategy Multiplayer Game

    December 18th, 2006 at 1:34 am

  2. To Play or Not To Play? « Beats Entropy

    December 24th, 2006 at 1:56 am

  3. Weewar For the Weekend

    June 2nd, 2007 at 5:32 am

  4. Weewar For the Weekend : Forecast-Blog

    June 2nd, 2007 at 5:41 am

Comments

RSS feed for comments on this post.

  1. Fashion Industry Ceo

    December 17th, 2006 at 9:59 pm

    I played it…i was a loser.

  2. Um

    December 17th, 2006 at 9:59 pm

    Did you really play a lot of risk as a kid?

  3. Michael Arrington

    December 17th, 2006 at 10:01 pm

    yes

  4. Matt_A

    December 17th, 2006 at 10:10 pm

    Some of us have work deadlines and posting stuff like this doesn’t help!

  5. Eric C.

    December 17th, 2006 at 10:18 pm

    Haven’t started playing kdice but this looks like a multi player version of dice wars. This is very exciting find.

    Heres dicewars:
    http://www.gamedesign.jp/flash/dice/dice.html

    wish the computer was trickier.

  6. joey

    December 17th, 2006 at 10:20 pm

    Warfish is a great multiplayer risk game that i’ve been addicted to for months now. Invite only but very fun.

  7. Phil

    December 17th, 2006 at 10:53 pm

    I was just coming to say warfish… joey, ya beat me to it.
    It’s a pretty faithful risk. It’s well implemented, too… not a lot of chrome or gratuitous visuals, but it works very well.

  8. Eric C.

    December 17th, 2006 at 10:56 pm

    so who wants to invite me? narf ey c*at*yahoo.com

    just remove the spaces and such, thanks :)

  9. Michael Arrington

    December 17th, 2006 at 11:11 pm

    techcrunch players need to stick together in this game

  10. Daniel Rust

    December 17th, 2006 at 11:22 pm

    i like how you use the same login as his gpokr game

    not as fast paced as the gpokr but the multiplayer aspect is great

  11. Marta

    December 17th, 2006 at 11:27 pm

    If you like Risk, but desire a more strategic and historical game, I’d recommend Empires in Arms. It focuses on warfare in the Napoleonic era and has seven players each playing a major power (France, United Kingdom, Russia, Austria, Prussia, Spain and Turkey). You play each month individually, and they include diplomatic, reinforcement, naval, land, and economic phases. It was designed as a board game, but online versions can be found as well - though those are difficult to run, since it’s turn based.

    Wikipedia has a list of some ongoing e-mail games
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empires_in_Arms

  12. Trott Felipe

    December 17th, 2006 at 11:50 pm

    That’s pretty sweet (besides the losing part).

  13. Preacherman

    December 18th, 2006 at 12:16 am

    The best version of Risk available online is called Lux. You can download it here:

    http://www.sillysoft.net/

    Multiplayer. Active online community. Many maps. Good times. Good times.

    The lead developer is a weasly Canadian named Dustin. Tell him Preacherman sent ya.

  14. Leon

    December 18th, 2006 at 1:19 am

    LOL.

    I can’t stop laughing reading this article and the comments. This is surely fun. :)

    (Matt_A: I’m sure we are all busy here. A little break from the serious stuff once a while is not a bad thing.)

  15. Auto

    December 18th, 2006 at 2:46 am

    This is almost identical to dicewars as mentioned by eric. Minus the multiplayer aspect of course.

    Best free online risk variant with plenty of ajaxy features would be http://www.landgrab.net

    Note I’m not affiliated with the creator desau but I did pay 60 bucks for the lifetime account. Its worth it.

    Heck, I spent a significant portion of my teenage years playing board risk too, that was before computers were all over the place.

  16. Adrian Keys

    December 18th, 2006 at 6:20 am

    Wow Sivasankaran …now I cant remember why I originally came to post….

  17. Mark

    December 18th, 2006 at 6:25 am

    Best answer if you’re looking to recapture the joy of Risk is http://www.conquerclub.com/ not quite as Ajax an interface but a great recreation of the game with new maps, rule variations and a strong community.

  18. Frank Cefalu

    December 18th, 2006 at 6:29 am

    OMG, I just read a book! O_O

  19. Steve-O

    December 18th, 2006 at 7:44 am

    Defcon is kind of a combination of Risk, the movie War Games and the game James Bond played in Never Say Never Again (Gawd, I’m such a geek). Not free, but the demo is and the full version is cheap. Man, I love this one. Simple but incredibly tough.

  20. Doeboy

    December 18th, 2006 at 7:55 am

    Mike,
    Is there a way to prevent people like ’sivasankaran’ taking advantage of your comments function and posting ridiculously long stories?

    moreover, what’s stopping people from posting their own company bios, specs ( i.e advertising ) in your comments section. While comments are not as valuable as blog writeups, they still get a lot of eyeballs and can be free advertising in a sense…..

  21. Jake

    December 18th, 2006 at 8:02 am

    Looks like sivasankaran really wants that digital camera.

  22. Rockwell

    December 18th, 2006 at 8:02 am

    http://www.DominateGame.com

    ^^Best Online Multiplayer Risk I know (with rankings and a bunch of user selected rule variations)

  23. Maki

    December 18th, 2006 at 8:17 am

    Preach cheats. He just sits there and roams in Asia while everyone else kills each other so he can get second ;)

    Lux is the best time, and has a great community of online players.

  24. Andy

    December 18th, 2006 at 9:39 am

    Not impressed. It seems to just sit there when I click on the interface. I guess all the TC readers are lagging it.

  25. Rockwell

    December 18th, 2006 at 9:46 am

    Michael, you should try Diplomacy - it’s like Risk but with more strategy, less luck and about 100x more fun.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomacy_(board_game)

    You can get in a game here:

    http://www.redscape.com/forum/index.php

  26. SpeedRacer

    December 18th, 2006 at 10:21 am

    Laggy interface, frequently doesn’t take input and marks you as ‘away’. I am running IE7… maybe this is the issue? I’ll try FF.

    On the game theory, I think there’s too much ‘randomness’… like where it puts the dice at end turn. For me, it always puts them ‘in the rear’ where they’re useless. Also there’s no way to take a ‘move turn’ and bring soldiers to the front.

    But an interesting waste of time anyway… it’s better than Bejeweled!

  27. Dave G.

    December 18th, 2006 at 10:52 am

    Another good time waster:

    http://www.websudoku.com/?level=4

  28. Jay

    December 19th, 2006 at 3:56 pm

    Just wasted an entire day on this game…. Thanks!

  29. Mark

    January 8th, 2007 at 9:08 am

    The Java Settlers of Catan are pretty good.

    Lots of sites host this game, e.g. http://jrh-xp.byu.edu/settlers/

« Previous post
Next post »