Design team Victor Szilagyi & Tristam Sparks are currently exhibiting their artsy-fartsy sculpture "Xblocks", a dual-surface maze game that looks reminiscent of old Donkey Kong.

xBlocks is a convergence between video games & sculpture — liberating play from the screen. It is a mixed reality installation inspired by traditional platform games of the late 1980s such as Super Mario Brothers or Pitfall. Using standard game controllers, two opposing players must help their characters navigate in and around a three dimensional maze. The real challenge comes, not from traditional game mechanics but rather from moving with your character as he sprints around corners and jumps between the installation's two play surfaces.

The link between "fine" art and video games seems to be gaining strength lately, but most of it strikes me as rather half-assed.

This would be a neat little toy, miniaturized. I can see it being sold in the SkyMall catalogue alongside electronic limb-removal kits for housecats ("Cauterize Without the Caterwaul!") and combination desk fan/windchimes. Eliza Gauger

Xblocks [Milog, via Randform.org]

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