Augmented reality gaming on touchscreen devices hasn't really amounted to anything more than just gimmicks, so it's refreshing when a game comes out that utilizes AR in a more unconventional way than just slaying zombies in your local neighborhood. London-based Darf Design have created an AR puzzle game, Hermaton: Enter the Grid, that uses a table top marker to allow users to navigate a 3D buzz wire maze on their smartphones or tablets.
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To play the game you journey around inside the "hermaton" machine switching on lights as you go, watching as they successively bring the machine to life. But more than just a game, the duo behind its design—Sahar Fikouhi and Arta Toulami—have also created an installation version, all the better to "harness augmented reality as a spatial medium". They say: "The large scale of the installation allows a greater understanding of how augmented reality can affect us at an architectural level and change the way we inhabit and perceive the built environment."In the installation version the markers cover entire walls as the space is transformed through the lens of an iPad or smartphone into an intricate hybrid environment. And there's not a zombie or angry bird in sight.
The pair previously created Grid (see below),a prototype and precurser to this piece, which again used an architectural maze in a built environmemt which people could navigate around.
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