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More Unusual Dice Designs

From Shapeways to Kickstarter and beyond, unique dice designs are big business

By Rain Noe - October 1, 2015

in Toy | Digital Fabrication

As we saw a few years ago with Chuck Stover's work and yesterday's post about Nvenom8 Designs' two-sided rolling die, Shapeways and 3D printing have become a go-to source for unusual dice designs. Here are some eye-catching stainless steel pieces on Shapeways by Ceramic Wombat:

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I'm guessing you roll this one to get better Wi-Fi:

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Steampunk Dice also has some very creative pieces:

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TGAW's "Elements of Harmony Die" dispenses with the numbers and apparently allows you to cast spells or something:

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Bertomg has created these nifty Balanced Hollow Dice, which use negative space for the indicators and have material in the center to add weight:

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Those are just a few from within the Shapeways world. Outside of it there's still plenty of variety, like architect-turned-product-designer Kacha's Zen Dice, which have Asian-ized style up the yin-yang:

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After his Zen Dice were successfully Kickstarted, Kacha designed another set—seemingly CNC-milled—that was a true Kickstarter smash. While he sought just $5,000, pledgers threw in $166,469 to fund his Ako Dice:

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This despite the fact that the anodizing looks good on some pieces…

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…not so hot on others:

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Currently being Kickstarted are these beautiful dice by Q-workshop:

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Their pitch video gives you some neat glimpses at the manufacturing process:

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Over in Europe, a vendor known as Dice Creator uses metal inlay to good effect…

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…as well as metal overlay:

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The thing that all of these varied dice designs have in common is that their deviations are all aesthetic. But what about function? Don't fret, this eBay seller's got you covered. The central design flaw of six-sided dice is that they don't hurt your foot that much when you accidentally step on them as they're hiding in the carpet. Well, problem solved:

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Rodrigo Guadarrama Murrieta

9 years ago

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hard to believe these would be balanced

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- David Wood
  
  Rodrigo Guadarrama Murrieta
  
  9 years ago
  
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  Reply
  
  Yeah, it might be interesting to see the chi-squares on some of those.
  
  Ultimately, though, the balance of the die is at least as important as any more cosmetic design choices to the target market. I would expect those selling them to take great care balancing the design.
  
  The other factor is that said target market can be stridently vocal, even shrill, and its membership talks to one another. If a flawed design rolls out (so to speak), I would expect the designer to get called out on it tout suite.
  
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