Dungeon Masters around the world must be celebrating at the possibility of giving their dungeons a touchscreen makeover.  Indeed, it seems that everything is more fun on a touchscreen — or at least the group at the Entertainment Technology Center of Carnegie Mellon must think so. They have made a very expensive update to the humble “table-top” game, using Dungeons & Dragons as a proof of concept on Microsoft’s Surface.

I am willing to bet the idea of playing Dungeons & Dragons on Surface came up a million times during development at Microsoft (after all, this guy definitely played when he was younger).  Now I have never actually played Dungeons & Dragons, so I can’t comment on how legit this version is, but it does look like a nice update to the classic game.  Menus and controls take full advantage of the touchscreen and look great even though it is only a work in progress.

Thanks to the iPhone and iPod touch touchscreens have proven that they are a viable gaming/control platform. Still, this would actually be one of the most expensive game consoles ever, but that’s only because Surface is still unreasonable for any buyers other than hotels.  Who knows — maybe there is a strong market for people who want more features then paper cuts and are too old for MagiQuest.

Surfacescapes Demo Walkthrough from Visual Story TAs on Vimeo.