Month: August 2022

Of all the attempts we’ve seen to digitize card games and eliminate game night controversies over poorly shuffled decks and questionably dealt hands, the ReQTable is the most ambitious and easily the most awesome, with its ability to generate holograms of playing cards that appear to float in front of each player, all without revealing those cards to others. Add some virtual monsters, and you’ve got my editor’s childhood dream.

Most attempts to digitize board games and card games usually involve turning a giant touchscreen display into a table large enough for players to gather around. That’s the approach devices like Arcade1Up’s Infinity Game Table have taken, and while they ensure that no one can rage flip the digital game boards and playing pieces when they start losing, they make it hard to play games like Poker, where players need to keep their hands private. The Infinity Game Table’s solution is physical shields that you can place on the touchscreen to hide specific parts of it from others, but the ReQTable’s solution is to throw some very cool custom display technology at the problem.

Developed by researchers at the University of Tokyo and set to officially debut at the Siggraph 2022 conference taking place next week, the ReQTable improves upon existing holographic display technology called slit mirror arrays. These are able to generate images that appear to float in mid-air in front of the intended observer without the need for special glasses. With dual-sided mirror arrays, the technology can generate a pair of holograms, viewable from opposing sides, which in this instance allows one person sitting at the table to see the cards they’ve been dealt with, while the person sitting across from them only sees the generic card backs.

The problem with this approach is that the dual slit mirror arrays traditionally produce stray light and ghost images, which in the case of a virtual card game, gives players a glimpse of their competitors’ hands. The ReQTable solves this problem and eliminates the stray light and ghost images through the use of polarizers, which can selectively suppress light of a specific frequency, and view control films, which block light traveling in certain directions, as detailed in a recently published paper:

Dual-sided displays as light sources are placed under the dual SMAs. In this case, the light rays from the back of the dual-sided displays forms mid-air images for each of the users. The light rays from the display are linearly polarized by the first polarizer. Next, the rays that form the ghost images are reflected an odd number of times in the dual SMAs. Therefore, the direction of their polarization changes, and they cannot pass through the second polarizer. In contrast, transmitted light rays and light rays forming mid-air images are reflected an even number of times in the dual SMAs. Their direction of polarization is different from that of the rays that become ghost images. Therefore, they can pass through the second polarizer.

Playing a round of virtual poker is a fun demonstration of why this improved holographic display technology could be potentially useful, but there are countless other applications. One day, computer monitors might be replaced with holographic displays generated by a desk, and the technology developed for the ReQTable could allow multiple people to share the same desk while keeping their individual holographic screens private from each other. The technology also encourages additional human interactivity, because despite a holographic object appearing to float in front of everyone at the table, they can still easily see each other and physically interact without the worry of knocking anything over.

Not to mention, we could use it to play a very advanced version of a children’s card game.

Imagine if I told you there was a new immersive sim — think Prey, Dishonored, etc — but made by a team of just two people. And then imagine I told you it was really damn good. And now stop imagining, because it’s real, obviously. It’d be a weird intro if it weren’t. Ctrl Alt Ego is a PC game about being an unattached ego, able to leap between various electronic items aboard a vast space station, and it’s consumed my week.

I want to get the room’s elephant acknowledged as early as possible, so we can get on with what’s important: no, this game doesn’t look pretty. Its art is functional, rarely attractive, and no screenshot is going to sell the game. But that matters for about thirteen seconds, and then you get on with the business of enjoying the game itself. And it’s a heck of a game.

You are, as I say, some sort of noncorporeal entity, capable of leaping between specific electronic items on a space station. This includes an awful lot of stationary items, from communicative CAT cabinets and wall-mounted monitors, to security cameras and destructive monitoring DAD bots. But crucially, there are also a bunch of mobile robots on board the ship, most importantly one called Bug 22.

Bug 22 is your constant companion (well, vehicle, really) throughout the game, capable of being “printed” at any number of Printing Stations, and given an ever-expanding number of abilities as you progress. The range of these abilities is extraordinary, unlockable in any order you choose, and dramatically changing how you can approach the game’s challenges. You could give Bug a weapon straight away, and take a far more aggressive approach to getting past the station’s angry security. Or you could pick the ability to levitate, and as such reach otherwise impossible passages and materials. Or you could pick Shift, and have a sort of telekinetic ability to move objects. Or you could…

It’s utterly incredible just how differently almost every situation in Ctrl Alt Ego can be approached, based on the skills you’ve unlocked, and indeed just your personal predilections. The game is designed to be experimented with, and techniques that feel like they might break the game have most likely been considered and accounted for. This means you have that Prey-like freedom to improvise, and the incredible satisfaction of discovering that your madcap approach can work!

Screenshot: MindThunk / Kotaku

This is all the most interesting for the way you aren’t Bug 22. It’s just a useful vehicle, but can also be completely abandoned for great stretches, as you leap between other mobile bots like the dog-like PUPs, spend a resource called Ego taking over defensive bots like DADs, and later mobile murder machines called MUMs, and explore vast areas just by jumping your consciousness.

There’s SO much detail here, with every possess-able machine offering unique messages, all manner of story pouring in from whoever is talking to you through the CAT cabinets, piles of goals to complete in each of the game’s vast sections in any order you choose , by any means you improvise, all with a phenomenal degree of freedom.

It’s mystifying that something so free, so open, is the work of two people, total. Yo have managed to break it a couple of times, through some outlandish actions, but the majority of the time I’ve just been delighted to find out my cockamamy plan has worked out. It also offers that most crucial of immersive sim elements: the bit where a great plan goes to crap, and you’re flailing to survive. It’s a joy that Ctrl Alt Ego rarely has me wanting to reload in such moments, but instead to scramble, to try to improvise my way out of a sudden and overwhelming jam.

there are SW many elements I want to tell you about, little details that blew me away, discoveries about ways to get through situations, even core game elements, but I got to discover them all for myself, and you should too. This is a wonderful game to just dive into, deliberately opaque at the start, as you learn its systems for yourself.

Screenshot: MindThunk / Kotaku

It’s also a huge game, a solid 20 hours at least, constantly expanding and becoming more interesting throughout. I’ve not finished it yet, and can’t wait to see what it has to offer in its final hours. This is remarkably good, and importantly, would still be considered remarkably good if it had come from a team of 30. Honestly, if Arkane doesn’t immediately give its creators a job, then I don’t understand how the universe works.

This is in my GOTY list already, and I desperately hope that it can break through, get some wider attention, and not be unfairly held back by its more primitive graphics. You’ll be blown away. And for just twenty bucks, along with an hours-long demo, you may as well try!

This article originally appeared on Buried Treasurea site dedicated to highlighting fantastic unknown games by fantastic unknown indies, so please do considering helping the Patreon here.