What goes up but never comes down? Our new project: Ascendice.
TL:DR - We’re working on a magical floating d20! There’s still some development to be done, but we’ll be launching on Kickstarter soon!
Update: Ascendice is now available for pre-order →
So for those of you that may not already know, we’ve been working on a new project, Ascendice! (Don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten about Realm Brew, we’ll have another update on that a bit later.) Ascendice is a magically levitating d20 that not only looks awesome, but functions just like a normal gaming die would.
Where We're At
We’re several months into the development phase at the moment and ironing out some of the complexities with the production. We’re developing new production techniques for both the dice and the base to guarantee we have the best quality and a long lasting product that will be able to sit pride of place in gaming rooms for many moons.
Early on in the process our Instagram community helped us to decide on a base shape and a name (Thanks everyone that voted!). Our working prototypes have been awesome to play with and we’ve learnt a lot from the tests we’ve done with them.
All About That Base
We want to make the base as compact as possible so the dice really stands out. We’re in the process of testing how just how compact we can get it for mass production. The base consists of dozens of components which are each complicated in their own right.
Prototyping different base materials has also been a focus. We’re trialing wood and marble at the moment and we’ll have some beautiful things to share with you soon!
The All Important Dice
The other thing in the works (and likely the most important part) is the dice designs! Ascendice is going to look epic, and nailing the d20 design is super important to us. We’re confident we can create some really cool looking dice. The difficult part is in the production.
The dice will be balanced so that they are fully functional for gaming as well as looking amazing, which means using a spherical magnet and getting it centred perfectly within the dice material. This is tricky as there aren’t any established production techniques that can get the magnet dead centre every time on a large scale. We're working with new technologies and at the moment the discard rate is still around 20 - 30% so more work needs to be done on getting that down.
We have samples in production so we’ll keep you posted on our progress and show you awesome shiny things too!
More on the project
Ascendice is now available for pre-order →
And if you want to read more about our Ascendice journey, you can read the next update →