Star Wars’ HoloChess comes to life in this HoloLens game called Echelon

Microsoft’s HoloLens has been used in many fields, but one developer has figured out how to use the headset to turn a board game into something much more fun and modern. Indeed, Helios Interactive designed Echelon, a multi-player HoloLens mixed reality board game that augments mixed reality creatures and game pieces (via RoadToVR.)

According to Kristafter Vale, Senior Unity Developer at Helios Interactive, Echelon takes the imagination from a traditional board game further by bringing the players into a deeper experience where the characters are actually having battles. The game uses cards to spawn creatures, is very colorful, cohesive, and players can still interact with each other in the real world while playing and wearing the HoloLens headset. It even takes inspiration from Star Wars’ HoloChess, according to Vale.

“When I saw the HoloChess game in Star Wars, I immediately wanted to play that game… And I had to wait now for us to have that technology like Unity and HoloLens to be able to realize that dream.”

It is not immediately clear if the developer has plans to bring Echelon to the Windows Store. Though it is certain that this game will inspire a new generation of developers to come to follow their dreams and create apps and games which can redefine standard experiences as we know it.

Further reading: developer, HoloLens, Microsoft