A platform game with real platforms
by Kyle Orland 
{ Apr 3rd 2007 at 8:54PM }
Experimental gaming these days is all about playing with reality. From virtual reality and alternate reality to augmented reality, more and more people are trying to merge video games and real life in interesting ways. Sebastien Schmieg's art project/game Roy Block adds another term to this growing list: mixed reality.
Roy Block uses real life, handheld wooden building blocks as the platforms for an on-screen avatar. A hidden camera detects the blocks as they're pressed against the tracing paper projection screen, translating their position and alignment to in-game data.
The "gameplay" in the project is pretty basic -- just guide the periodically jumping Roy from one end of the screen to the other while avoiding floating enemies -- but Schmieg sees the potential for more complex play by assigning different functions to each side of the blocks. Schmieg also has an idea for a version "as big as a wall ... with blocks so big that you need both hands to hold one." Would that be mixed reality exergaming? More buzzwords, stat!
Continue reading for video of the project in action.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
BPM @ Apr 4th 2007 12:29AM
Wow, that was pretty cool. I'd like to see this project fleshed out a bit (with different "difficulty levels" that require multiple uses of the blocks).
Reminds me of something I saw on Joystiq a while back... It was some sort of "3D platformer" that the "characters" were projected onto a real world object, and that object became their world.
Dustin @ Apr 4th 2007 12:40AM
Quite neat actually. I think things like this would make much better games. Talk about CO-OP !
Brian Sexton @ Apr 4th 2007 2:17AM
The person who made this project, Sebastian Schmieg, is the same person who made the Blix theme for WordPress (http://www.kingcosmonaut.de/blix/).
shadowchaoscontrol @ Apr 4th 2007 6:27AM
wow, i'd love to play that