I spent all day Monday in a long meeting discussing the other top-secret collectible game on which I’ve been working. (I announced the first, High Stakes Drifter, a couple weeks back.) Toward the end of the day, the question came up: “When can we tell people about this?”

The answer: “Right now.”

So: I’m working on a game with the working title Marvel Heroes Battle Dice for Playmates Toys. The game features collectible pop-dice that are hollow and pop open when you squeeze the sides. In the course of play, you place collectible prepainted plastic figures into the dice and roll them. Since you can’t see which figures your opponent puts into each die, there’s a lot of bluffing going on. Because both the dice and the characters can affect the game in different ways, it starts simple but has a good amount of depth. There’s a lot more to it than that, but you’ll have to wait until we’re ready to release the rules before you can get the whole story.

As you might guess from the title, the initial release, due in early 2006, features characters (both heroes and villains) from Marvel Comics: Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Hulk, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, etc. The figures are only about 15mm tall, but they have an incredible amount of detail. Playmates’ long experience with making toys really shines through here.

If anyone out there’s interested in playtesting this game on very short notice, drop me an e-mail. Experienced game-bangers only please.