If you've ever found yourself watching the HoloChess scene from Star Wars and hankering to play it yourself, a new game for HoloLens might satisfy that urge. Described as a mix of chess, board games, and card games, HoloGrid: Monster Battle leverages HoloLens' mixed reality prowess to bring the game to life.
In HoloGrid: Monster Battle, you strategically do battle with monsters on a virtual board. The gameplay itself is intended to work like a Hearthstone battle, but on a chess board.
Leveraging the HoloLens platform's core mixed reality technologies: spatial mapping and spatial sound, gaze tracking, gesture input, and voice control; the HoloLens version of HoloGrid: Monster Battle "reads' the player's environment, and then allows them to place and scale the board and characters into the real world accurately.
The game has already been available as an AR and VR game on other platforms, but HoloLens represents "the purest vision yet" for the game, says Mike Levine, founder of publisher Happy Giant. And based on footage available from the mobile version of the game, which uses physical cards to bring AR monsters to life, it looks pretty impressive already.
HoloLens is still very much a developer product, so the audience for the game is pretty small right now. But if you happen to have your hands on one of the headsets, you can pick up HoloGrid: Monster Battle from the Windows Store for $4.99.
Download HoloGrid: Monster Battle from the Windows Store
We may earn a commission for purchases using our links. Learn more.
These are the biggest PC announcements from CES 2021
CES 2021 was different in that it wasn't held at a physical location. Instead, companies relied on press kits and virtual presentations to showcase all the new products. We've rounded up the best PC-related announcements in case you happened to miss the show.
The Xbox Series S is a little beast
Recently, I've had the opportunity to go hands-on and test out an Xbox Series S. And I have to say, I am truly impressed with Microsoft's pint-sized next-gen Xbox.
Could the Qualcomm SC8280 be the answer to Apple's M1?
A new report suggests Qualcomm may finally be readying a brand-new chip design for Windows on ARM PCs. The SC8280 is a larger chip that supports up to 32GB of RAM and even faster LPDDR5. But how many cores it can run and how fast it remains unknown. The chances we'll see it in 2021, however, seem likely.
The best Razer keyboards for your gaming PC
Razer makes a lot of great keyboards, but there are some which rise above the rest. If you're going to buy a new Razer gaming keyboard, these are the ones to get.