West Karana

Slight correction: the developers claim there are 16 spinning faces, but 8 will be hidden when in use. This means that you would not be able to close this in such a way as to protect the spinning surfaces. Doesn’t make much sense, but it is what they claim.

And yet more correction: I take all that back. The design portion of the campaign page — just after the feature checklist — shows a sketch showing the Nexus Cube folded up, showing the spinny faces protected and the blank faces on the back explicitly called a grip surface. Also, just noticed, their glowy numbers look to be a 3D printed facade laid over the Nexus Cube prototype — it’s an entirely different material. I believe the people running the campaign are just saying any possible thing to keep people backing the campaign. And their CNC machine shots are totally sus — the machine surface on the two photos looks entirely different in each one. Also, dudes, you’re not getting a pound of machined titanium for $45. Think about it.

And yet more: turns out there’s a bunch of examples of this thing (without the spinner thingies) available as fidget toys. And I ordered one! I’ll update when I get it and we’ll see if I can duplicate the motions they do with it in their videos.

Occasionally, Kickstarter sends me e-mails promoting projects they think I might like. They aren’t usually anything I’m interested in — they apparently, for example, believe I need a lot of EDC — Every Day Carry — items, and the amount of stuff they think everyone should be carrying is quite a lot.

A couple of years ago, I backed a little mechanical dice roller spinner gadget. By the time it came — very late — the D&D campaign game I was playing in at the time had ended. It worked, it spun, it did everything it said it would do, but I really couldn’t think of any game in which I would actually use it. I don’t know exactly where it is right now. It would not have been much use in the Fae or Dungeon Crawl Classics games I’ve played since then. The spinny noise was cool, though.

When the e-mail advertised a far more complicated dice spinner thingy, I just had to check it out, see what the new generation of dice spinner thingies would bring.

I bring you: The Nexus Cube: Your Very Own Infinity Dice Cube.

“Metal Sleeve丨Infinitely Foldable Cube丨Rotatable D4 to D100 Dice Tray丨Minimalist & Portable丨Durable & Sturdy丨 Fidget丨Gameplay丨EDC”. Ah, there it is, the EDC. You’ll be wanting to carry this every day, along with your multitool, survival knife, emergency blanket, flares, scalpel, compass, flashlight, USB cable, water bottle, ruler, slide rule… (I’m reading these from the Kickstarter search page and they haven’t even gotten to dice spinner thingies yet).

This “dice cube” is a collection of eight spinners with various dice numbers on them. Seven of them are the standard d4/d6/d8/d10/d12/d20/percentile, and an eighth is marked “Lucky 2026”, because presumably they couldn’t think of an eighth die to put in (like, a second d20, perhaps, for advantage/disadvantage checks?). These are connected in two magnetically connected strips of four; the center squares are hinged vertically; the end squares are hinged horizontally, allowing a variety of different folds. The two strips are barely connected, and I suspect most of the time the two strips won’t be strongly held by the two small magnets connecting them.

The fulfilment date is May, 2026 — just over three months from the time of this writing. This is just wildly optimistic. I’m an expert in waiting for physical Kickstarter rewards. If this is real at all, it won’t be shipped this year, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they missed 2027 as well. If this is real.

That’s not how a d8 looks — or how a percentile die looks. The “d100” should look like the “d10”, not a “d12”.

It’s kind of funny how, every time they show they prototype, they hold it in such a way as to hide the fact that it is two mechanically separated strips, not one interconnected whole. In the picture above, the left and right halves are being held together, though a diagram they have later on says the middle hinges are magnetized.

In this image, the two halves are folded and sat next to each other. The magnetic hinges are not touching.

THIS rendering would unfold into a single strip of eight squares horizontally connected. In none of the pictures do they unfold it this way. They’ve added two hinges that aren’t in the other ones.

I’m not sure how many images to this point were AI generated, but from here on, they all are. Above is a rendering of a group of cosplayers playing what looks to be some sort of card game with, as far as I can tell, absolutely no need for dice. The DM is being entirely ignored as he holds his piece of paper, from which he isn’t reading.

This animation shows the Nexus Cube unfolding in a way the hinges wouldn’t work, and also implies there’s eight additional spinny dice things on the other sides of the one we can see. I’m not certain if this was entirely AI generated or just modified after the fact.

This picture implies that the Nexus Cube can replace a full double handful of six-sided dice. It can’t — it only has one d6 face. That said, what’s up with those dice? So many fours! Sometimes two or three on one die!

I don’t know if the animation is showing, but it opens to reveal eight more faces inside; and it also grows a couple of hinges and loses a couple more.

I’ll give them the Board Game up there, but the library — how do people get to the books on the left? And for that matter, how do those people even get into their chairs? For “Waiting”, since the game they’re playing apparently only uses huge d6s that have four pips on every face, the Nexus Cube can probably handle it. But actually, if you can only roll a four, you probably don’t need dice at all. “What did you roll?” “I rolled a… four!”.

My favorite of all the AI renders is the upper left one. It appears to be a Monopoly variant that uses only giant d4s and has you place normal playing cards either face p or down on the multicolors properties. However, they accurately depicted how drunk you have to be to want to play Monopoly. The guy opening the box while being very careful not to look into it is kind of squatting in front of the couch behind him, as near as I can tell.

On the upper right, all the board games look like Bollywood movie posters. I have a huge game collection, and I believe that out of the couple of hundred board games I have, exactly zero of them have that same dude and occasional friend front and center on the cover.

The original caption for this image was “Timeless Metal Treasures”. Maybe they’re referring to the pocket watch, or the snap on the EDC wallet.

Well, let’s see how the AI slop cube matches up against traditional dice. They both are made of matter, so that’s a point in both their favors, though based on the renderings, I’m not so certain the Nexus Cube actually is.

Random Mechanism. Correct, dice are unable to roll random numbers. As we have seen, dice can only roll the number “4”.

Function. Correct, dice have no function.

Convenience. Also correct, dice are inconvenient. And, skipping ahead, cannot be made of durable materials due to natural law.

Use cases. This one confused me. Does it mean that the Nexus Cube can be put in a case, while regular dice cannot? Or does it mean that there is no use cases for dice. If there are no situations where using dice would be appropriate, then just what problem is this novel random dice spinner thingy supposed to solve?

Hey look, the add-ons! They were more expensive and now they are cheaper! My favorite add-on is the full on treasure chest. I am struggling to figure out why my EDC Nexus Cube needs a treasure chest. Also, if that were really made of wood and metal as it appears to be, it would be hella expensive. Next up is a dice bag for your Nexus Cube. You pull that out at a game, everyone expects there to be dice in that dice bag, and PSYCH! It’s a dice spinner thingy!

We’ve seen the wallet; only thing left is that weird map of Rohan and Gondor. Leave aside that this is almost certainly not licensed by the Tolkien estate, what has this possibly got to do with the dice spinner thingy? Was $35, now $20, but I just looked — you can get bunches of similar desk mats for about $15 each. Delivered in a day or two, probably.

Anyway. Enjoy. There’s a bunch more stuff to enjoy, but I’ll leave you to go check it out and discover all the additional bits of crazy still left to find. And check out the entirely uncritical backer comments; well, they do ask some questions like, “Why doesn’t the percentile die (not a d100) have 00 instead of 100, like every other real percentile die?”. That was a good question.