We’ve all seen our fair proportion of battle arenas, however a battle area within the type of a floating, rotating, principally shape-shifting block? That’s new. It’s known as (what else?) The Dice, and it’s a large multiplayer shooter from Atomic Coronary heart developer Mundfish.
Of all of the 2025 Summer time Sport Fest bulletins, The Dice struck me, because of its formidable hexahedronic design. To study extra, I just lately sat down for a distant video interview with Robert Bagratuni, CEO of Mundfish, who was accompanied by communications director Christina Omelchenko, who translated between Russian and English at some stage in our dialog.
Picture: Mundfish
For a recreation this centered round a selected form, there could be however one opening query: Why a dice? The reply is surprising: “Why not a triangle, or a pyramid, or a sphere? We wish to troll the fellows who imagine our Earth is a airplane,” Bagratuni defined.
Other than the tongue-in-cheek intention to “troll flat-earthers,” there’s a extra critical rationale behind the design as effectively.
“Initially, with many of the issues within the universe, when you consider an ideal form, it’s usually thought of one thing aspheric, like the celebrities, the planets, and so forth,” Bagratuni mentioned. “My dice is a really totally different entity because it’s lit up from the highest by the solar, the place it’s very vivid in the course of the day. On the underside face of the dice, it’s darkish, and on the aspect faces of the dice, there’s a twilight zone.”
“This idea provides a lot variability of what you see, how the settings change, and the way the lighting modifications,” Bagratuni added. “Plus, it actually performs along with your mind; the way you understand the expertise. You could be standing on the aspect tile of the dice and have a vertical horizon. It simply provides such a unique expertise.”
As if navigating a static floating dice doesn’t sound nauseating sufficient, The Dice will encompass rotating planes that continually shift the lay of the land. Think about operating and gunning throughout a levitating Rubik’s Dice whereas some invisible energy is twisting its tiles — such a posh design naturally comes with fairly just a few improvement challenges.
Bagratuni mentioned that The Dice’s idea poses a monumental technological activity for his workforce: “It’s a problem for the builders to create a system that enables 1000’s of objects to maneuver concurrently on-line, in actual time. Thousands and thousands, tens of millions, tens of millions of objects.”
However The Dice’s improvement workforce got here up with a posh system to take care of the issue. “We name it a split-rendering system that enables for a easy rotation,” Bagratuni mentioned. “That is our personal know-how that we developed and are tremendous happy with. It was one and a half years of exhausting tech work to ship that have.”
However sufficient about twisting planes. What really occurs on these planes?
As proven in The Dice’s reveal trailer from Summer time Sport Fest, the die-shaped world is frequented by your fellow gamers in addition to unfriendly monstrosities in all sizes and shapes: a large tumor-shaped creature with claws, one thing that appears like a residing tree with a birdhouse caught on its head, and — let’s hope they’re on our aspect — pretty humanoid robots.
Though some gameplay particulars stay a thriller for now, Bagratuni mentioned that The Dice entails extra than simply combating and surviving; RPG components, akin to a storyline and character development, will form your journey.
“The expertise of The Dice will certainly be story-driven and never simply raids, grinds, and issues like that,” he mentioned. “We wish to be sure that there’s deep character development and you may develop your character in numerous instructions, thus creating a personality construct that’s tremendous tailor-made to the way you wish to expertise The Dice.”
Picture: Mundfish
Set in the identical universe as Atomic Coronary heart, it’s best to count on a sci-fi world stuffed with anomalies and absurdities, with mind-blowing technological developments and maybe a shady laboratory or two. Based mostly on the trailer, some outdated Atomic Coronary heart acquaintances are prone to make an look — howdy there, Granny Zina!
Regardless of this robust connection, “It isn’t essential or tremendous essential to play Atomic Coronary heart to grasp what The Dice is,” Bagratuni defined. “Although after all, narratively talking, The Dice is an important a part of Atomic Coronary heart’s world and it’s very interconnected with its occasions.”
“I assume taking part in Atomic Coronary heart can be enriching if you wish to dig deeper into the lore. However what we wish to do is be sure that it’s simple to leap into The Dice and never get pissed off by not understanding what’s happening.”
I attempted to prod a bit of for extra intel on character builds and sophistication techniques, however Bagratuni declined to elaborate. “As we transfer ahead with preparation for the launch, we’re going to be revealing increasingly more,” he mentioned. “The primary trailer announcement was solely a glimpse of what we’re going to present you.”
However primarily based on what I’ve seen and heard about to date — from its head-spinning physics to its engrossing narrative trappings — The Dice appears to be a inventive twist on the MMO style. As Bagratuni mentioned in our name, “Loopy issues are taking place there.”
