König der Maulwürfel (2002)

The inhabitants of the planet ROLLEX in the Sun system SOLLEX used to live on nothing but the delicious fried dice that fell from the sky. They found these so delicious, that they would often spend years at a time, just sitting in their towers, hardly moving at all, enjoying this delicacy. Now and then, they would ascend to the top of their towers, and, just for the fun of it, would spit out dice in all directions out over the surrounding lands. As a result, it wasn’t long before they were known far and wide as the Dicemouths.

However, one day the rain of fried dice dried up, and the Dicemouths got extremely hungry. But they remembered all the dice that they’d spat out in the older, better, times. Looking around, they found that many of them had developed into full grown dice trees, covered in fresh ripe fried dice. But when the dicemouths tried to leave their towers to pick the dice, they found that they’d got so fat that they couldn’t get out through the doors. They were trapped in their own towers.

But just before it was too late, one of the dicemouths, who’d saved a few dice in his tower, had a brilliant idea. He spat out a die, just as they had always done, but this time, as the die shot out from the tower, he kept tight hold of it, and he and his tower were dragged along behind the flying die. In this way, he managed to reach the dice trees, picked their fruit, and passed them on to all his friends, saving the race of dicemouths.

Soon, all the dicemouths were able to travel this way. And they developed a race, held every year, a dice tower race. And nowadays, every year, the winner of the race is crowned as King of the Dicemouths.

The game's name is a German pun. "Maulwurf" (pl. Maulwürfe) means "mole," while "Maul" and "Würfel" mean "mouth" and "dice," respectively. So the game's characters are both moles (note the cover illustration) and "dice-mouths."