I bought about 50 wooden cubes from a craft store thinking that they would be handy for making a game. They are about 1/2 inch (1 cm) per side.
Thing is that the last time I got lots of cubes, my game design fell apart after I painted all of them.
Anyway, I was just wondering what kind of ideas would any of you use them for? I have been designing games that use them as custom made dice, or as pieces on a board, or both. My ideas get too complicated to carry out however. And lately I have just gotten frusterated, and worked on my RPG system, or computer game instead.
I would also like to know what your opinion is on how much information on a cube is too much. I could keep track of one varible with the side up, another with its orientation. Not to mention different symbols, and such, on each.
50 of 'em, eh? That sounds like a lot! I feel your pain, I picked up a ton of 3/8" cubes for a game and then changed the game so I no longer used cubes! Luckily I only used little colored stickers to mark the cubes, easily undone to make them more generic (not that I have any games that current;y use cubes).
Half-inch is kind of big for tracking the accumulation of game resources (like in Wallenstein or Age of Mythology), but could work if you had only a few to track (so that the piles of cubes didn't get too large).
The idea of tracking game states would be OK, but you would probably have to limit the sides to simple colors of easily read symbols. I don't know if you'd have enough room to put any meaningful text. I could see using a symbol with a distinct orientation as you mentioned. The size should be OK if the symbol is simple enough.
1/2" is only 12.7mm (far less than the average 16mm die) which makes it a little small for using as a die, but not too small.