HoloGrid: Monster Battle Launches Kickstarter

Evan Griffin

9 years ago

HoloGridScreens04

In celebration of the official “Star Wars” day of the year, May the 4th, film industry veteran Phil Tippett, an Oscar-winning animation supervisor that gave us the magical effects in Jurassic Park, Robocop, and most recently The Force Awakens, has banded together with game developers at HappyGiant, assembled from veterans of ILM and LucasArts, to bring us a different kind of game that could shake the strategy genre in both video gaming, and tabletop gaming, and I have seen it come to life firsthand.

“For years I’ve been making monsters for Directors to play with, and now for the first time, I’m making monsters for YOU to play with,” says Phil Tippett. “We’re excited about the new fields of Augmented and Virtual Reality, and to be working with our friends at HappyGiant to create HoloGrid: Monster Battle.”

The announcement on May the 4th from Tippett Studio and HappyGiant, was the launch of a Kickstarter campaign to create and distribute this CCR, augmented reality card game for everyone to enjoy.

I had the chance to interview Michael Levine, the President of HappyGiant, while at PAX East 2016, to get a real idea of what this augmented reality game was, and how it was based on the HoloChess scene from the original Star Wars. Additionally, at the end of PAX this year, the game was awarded the title of “Best Technology of PAX East 2016.”

“We’re excited to be launching this Kickstarter with Phil Tippett and his studio, and bringing to life a game so many of us have always wanted to play” says Mike Levine, “This is our first step into a new world of AR gaming, and while we are launching it on mobile initially so everyone can play it, our long term vision is to bring it to emerging AR and VR platforms.”

In our TYF interview with Levine, we further discuss those details of the digital game, the physical media, the rendering of the monsters through Photogrammetry, and eventual multiplatform release on devices like Oculus, PlayStation VR, Microsoft Hololens, etc. You can watch the interview in the video below.