Marvel Contest of Champions: Battlerealm is a dice game based on the mobile app based on the comic book mini-series

A popular free-to-play mobile app set in the Marvel comic universe is being turned into a dice game.

Marvel: Contest of Champions was released for iOS and Android in late 2014 and has gone on to rack up more than 40 million downloads.

In the app, players build a team of superheroes from the Marvel universe and battle them against other players’ line-ups in the form of one-on-one 2D fighters such as Mortal Kombat or Injustice, although the opponents are controlled by AI.

The game has gone on to build a roster filled with dozens of Marvel characters, including the Avengers (including Spider-Man), the X-Men, Deadpool, Punisher and even Howard the Duck.

Contest of Champions was itself loosely based on the eponymous three-issue mini-series of comics published in the early ‘80s where the Grandmaster and Death use some of the superheroes as pawns in a game to decide the fate of the Collector. The event was referenced in this year’s Marvel movie Thor: Ragnarok as Thor battles Hulk in the Grandmaster’s own ‘Contest of Champions’.

The upcoming tabletop adaptation Marvel Contest of Champions: Battlerealm sticks to the superhero-brawling format, with three to six people taking control of characters and rolling dice to activate their powers and travel between locations to collect points or steal points off their rivals.

It plays in about half an hour to 45 minutes and comes with 13 character cards and 14 standees in the box – though the final roster is yet to be revealed.

Battlerealm will cost $40 (£30) over in the US and is due for release next summer, not long after the latest marvel blockbuster, Avengers: Infinity War, hits cinema screens.