It’s amazing how many different games there are to play on mobile, from obscure arthouse products with a political message like Blackbar to bubbly casual puzzlers like Toon Blast, all of them made possible by the mass market touchscreen miracle of the smartphone.

However, the best games are usually the ones that have been around the longest, and Dice Duel is based on a game that has been around for the best part of a century, albeit with several modern twists to bring it bang up to date.

The game in question is Dice Poker. This venerable pastime involves trying to get poker-esque hands with five dice. You get three throws per turn, and you can hold back as many dice as you like from throw to throw.

For example, if you’ve got three sixes you can just roll the remaining dice and hope for another two sixes (assuming you still need a five of a kind or sixes). By the end of each game you need to have ticked off all of the hands.

Choosing which hand to go for and which dice to hold back from one throw to the next is a deep tactical challenge, and Dice Duel strikes a perfect balance between chance and skill.

Naturally, the game avails itself of the smartphone’s capacity for multiplayer goodness with a whole range of different ways to take on other players, either randomly or against a specific opponent, for kicks or for gems. You can have multiple games on the go at once, too, so there’s no chance of being left hanging.

So it’s little wonder that Dice Duel is a hit. In fact, according to developer b-interaktive the app has been at the top of the download charts solidly since 2011.

Specifically, it has dominated the Dice Game category on the German App Store, while remaining in the top 5 Paid, Most Downloaded, and Top Grossing charts for several years, as well as the top 3 Board Games in the same region.

Thanks to constant updates and improvements, as well as a strategy of inviting players to make suggestions and acting on them, Dice Duel’s user base has doubled annually – a growth rate that is literally exponential.

So you should probably go and see what all the fuss is about. You can download Dice Duel on Google Play and the App Store.