Designing tangible video games: lessons learned from the sifteo cubes

In this paper, we present a collaborative game designed for Sifteo Cubes, a new tangible interface for multiplayer games. We discuss how this game exploits the platform's interface to transfer some of the game mechanics into the non-digital world, and how this approach affects both the player's experience and the design process. We present the technical limitations encountered during game development and analyze video recordings of play sessions with regard to the play strategies developed by the players. Then, we identify two properties that this game shares with many other games on tangible platforms and discuss how these properties influence both the game design process and the player experience. We advocate that these properties provide players with more freedom and relatedness, while helping to create an easy-to-learn and customizable gameplay, despite their own design limitations.