These dice are beautiful, flash with siren colour combinations, know your roll, and report that to your virtual tabletop.
It’s not a surprise to see these Pixel doing well, it’s more unusual to see the big computer game sites cover a dice Kickstarter, but I guess the fancy electronics have captured attention. So, let’s see what the internet has been talking about and helped Jean Simonet smash the $200,000 goal. There’s more than $2,200,000 pledged so far, and you’ve still gone three weeks for your willpower to crumble. You can join in on the project page.
Pixel dice aren’t any larger than regular dice and stay charged for hours. The design team, led by Jean Simonet, who is an electrical engineer and also an ex-game designer from Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Skyrim, note that the Bluetooth ability of the Pixel dice works with Foundry and Roll20.
These dice are heavier than plastic dice, though, but not as heavy as metal. Plastic dice are around 6 grams, according to an infographic on the campaign page, resin around 6.7 g, gemstone 13.1g, metal 27.4g and these pixels are 8.1 grams.
Are they balanced?
Pixels are, above all, great dice for your table games. This means that balance and fair rolls are just as important to us as all the fancy electronics inside. We have dedicated a lot of time, design and testing to make sure they are as fair as possible. With a combination of small counterweights and precise attention to the finish of our edges, we’ve already made Pixels surprisingly well balanced. And of course we will continue to improve the balance before release.
So, there’s your answer; surprisingly well balanced. While that might not pass muster at the tables of Las Vegas, it’s good enough for my gaming tables.
The team actually puts emphasis on how well balanced the Pixels are with a 10,000 roll test. Here’s the summary; better than Chessex, similar to Game Science.
There’s an accompanying smartphone app from which you configure the colours of your dice. It’s also the smartphone that connects to the Bluetooth in each Pixel. It will therefore be your phone which relays the results of your critical fumble live to the web.
How much do Pixel dice cost?
These are the Kickstarter costs, and a gamble with every such hardware project is whether there will be a retail release and whether that’ll be cheaper.
It takes a pledge of $39 to get one dice. You’ll get a single dice charger with that and have to pay shipping costs.
It’s $77 to get two dice, therefore a tiny bit more cost-effective.
You can keep adding dice until $199, at which point you get the 7-set and the larger “To-go” charging case.
If you like having 2d20 or perhaps 2d6 in your set to make 8, then the tier for that costs $218. You’ll still get the To-go charging case, and you’ll get a single dice charger for the extra dice.
The Pixels Kickstarter goes all the way up to $999, and that’ll get you five sets, five extra cases, five to-go cases and five single cases. You also get a thank you.
What are your thoughts? Strike up a discussion and leave a comment below.
