When I was a kid I had two main hobbies: Lego and computer games, with the latter gradually taking more precedence, so I'm pretty darn excited to discover an experimental game that involves both of them at the same time.
While there have been plenty of official Lego video games in recent years, this is something much more innovative. Made with Unreal Engine 5, the prototype involves solving problems with real Lego bricks as the input device (check out our picks of the best game development software if you want to start working on your own prototypes).
Erik Liermann is a creative technologist and product design engineer based in Cologne, Germany. His demo uses a webcam to detect where you place real Lego bricks into order to solve problems in the game.
The concept is the culmination of various explorations and experiments with novel hand-tracking input ideas using Unreal Engine. Erik says he was also inspired by wanting to play video games with his daughter but also limit screen time. He used the OpenCV computer vision library for conversion in Unreal Engine 5.5.
Erik says he has no plans to develop his Unreal Engine Lego concept into a full game at the moment, but I really think the Danish brick giant should get in touch because the idea has legs! It might be a lot easier to make exclusively in-game mechanics, but the use of real Lego bricks as an input device breaks through the screen and ads an intriguing real-world tangibility that could appeal to adults and children alike.
"Huge potential here for some game developed with the Lego company," one person enthuses over on Reddit. "Imagine kids having to make a way to get Batman to the joker or some puzzle using the Bionics characters."
For more innovative game ideas, check out Odd Dorable, a dad's upcoming video game based on his four-year-old daughter's artwork. And for more game development news, check out fans' breakdown of the new GTA 6 trailer.
