What are Kickstarter Quick Picks?
Kickstarter Quick Picks are short looks at projects currently on Kickstarter that are of interest to me, and by extension, many of our GeekDad readers. A Quick Pick is not an endorsement of the Kickstarter campaign, nor have I (as yet) received any product copies to review. If you like what you see here, go check out the campaign and decide for yourself if you’d like to back it, or wait until GeekDad has had a chance to go hands-on. As always, caveat emptor- let the buyer beware.
New to Kickstarter? Check out our crowdfunding primer.
What is Tilt Five: Holographic Tabletop Gaming?
Tilt Five is an Augmented Reality social gaming system currently on Kickstarter. At the time of this writing, there is approximately a week and a half left in their campaign. Pledge levels range from the ‘Tilt Five XE Kit’ for $299, all the way up to ‘The Archivist’ for $10,000. Tilt Five aims to ship in July of 2020, though if you back at the ‘Tilt Five Early Beta / XE Kit’ level, then expected shipment is in February 2020. They are currently fully funded at over $1.3 million dollars. You can check out their campaign here.
A single pledge comes with glasses, a wand controller, the game board, USB cable, a variety pack of nose pieces, and introductory games. Users will provide their own phone, tablet or PC to run the software. Games will range from videogame-like experiences to roleplaying games, all employing holographic augmented reality viewed through the lightweight glasses. It should be noted that to play together with multiple players, each player will at minimum need their own glasses, wand and USB cable.
Here is some video shot through the Tilt Five glasses, to give you an idea of what to expect:
Why Check Out Tilt Five: Holographic Tabletop Gaming?
As with any new crowdfunded product, you’re betting on the promise of something amazing. Some technology Kickstarters fall short of their promises, or never deliver anything beyond vaporware.
With Tilt Five, it’s looking to be a pretty good bet that they’ll deliver on a solid product. The company has been together since 2017, and it’s composed of gamers who are also highly skilled technological visionaries in the AR (Augmented Reality) field. C.E.O. Jeri Ellsworth is formerly one of the co-founders of castAR, an augmented reality hardware and software platform.
But as you know, a gaming system, no matter how technically impressive, is only as good as its games. Tilt Five already has an impressive list of partner games, including Fantasy Grounds, Tabletopia, and Critical Brick. They even have Hologrid Monster Battle from Happy Giant & Phil Tippet Studios, inspired by the HoloChess game Phil Tippet created for Chewbacca and C-3PO to play in the original Star Wars. As someone currently running a Starfinder campaign online with Fantasy Grounds, I’m very excited at the prospect of being able to break out of the two dimensional computer screen and bring my RPG sessions to life.
And for those interested in developing software for the Tilt Five, you’ll be happy to know that each pledge also comes with access to the SDK (software development kit). So whether you’re a hobbyist or professional coder, you’ll be able to create software to work with the Tilt Five hardware.
If you’d like to know more about Tilt Five: Holographic Tabletop Gaming, you can take a look at their Kickstarter campaign or visit their website. The campaign ends on Monday, October 28th.
To subscribe to GeekDad’s tabletop gaming coverage, please copy this link and add it to your RSS reader.
Click here to see all our tabletop game reviews.
