Ohm’s Quest is a steampunk-inspired cubic device that acts as a sort of escape game console. You can scan an NFC-enabled card on one side of the cube and a new story begins with interactive challenges that you should solve as a team.

While we don’t cover board games very often on TechCrunch, there was something funny about Ohm’s Quest when I spoke to the team behind it. This project lies at the intersection of escape rooms, board games and technical creativity.

The team has already launched pre-orders on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. It has raised 230,000 euros from more than a thousand backers and expects the game to ship in early 2024. The starter kit is currently priced at $249.

“We design audio stories in which you are the hero. You play against history together with a team. “So there are characters in the story who need your help to solve problems,” co-founder and CTO Allison Klopp told me.

And the interface to the game is the dice shown above. There are two cubes included in the box that you can connect with a cable – they communicate wirelessly, but there are multiple slots that are used differently depending on the story. On one side of the cube is a control panel with LED-activated buttons as well as a directional joystick and a rotary wheel.

There is a speaker to listen to the story as well as a built-in accelerometer. On the other side is a tiny display that can show messages or the time left until something dramatic happens.

Photo credit: Ohm’s search

“Since these interfaces don’t contain context, we add context with cardboard elements like cards, instruction manuals, and game boards,” co-founder and CEO Etienne Pouget told me. Some cards have an NFC tag, which also allows the cube to receive some information from certain cards.

Some challenges include mixing sounds, solving a maze, asking questions of potential murderers using cards, passing a chemical element from one cube to another, etc.

It is a hardware/software game and Ohm’s Quest expects to release a new story each month when the dice become available. The team is also working on a mobile app that will allow people to purchase new stories and transfer them to the cube.

Some stories will be digital-only – you can purchase them at home and print out the instructions to play them. Other stories come with new accessories – game board, figures and cards.

Ohm’s Quest also hopes to build a community of players around its game. There will be a creator mode so the most enthusiastic players can create their own stories. The Ohm’s Quest team could then work with an illustrator to create maps for these stories – the creators of the stories would receive compensation.

As you can see, the team behind Ohm’s Quest has a lot of creative ideas for their puzzle-meet-story platform. There could also be new cubes with new interaction methods in the future. “We dream of a cube with an olfactory interface to conduct research using scent,” Pouget said.

Photo credit: Ohm’s search