Google Glass gets five mini-games demonstrating tech's potential

Google has released a free collection of mini-games designed to show off the gaming potential of the Google Glass wearable computing device. Got one of these $1,500 headsets? Well done you: you can now play games on it.

As detailed on the Google Glass blog, these games are deliberately simple. They can be activated by voice commands, and use various gestural controls.

A list of games is below, along with Google's explanation of how each works, and finally a video for those of us in the cheap seats.

Developers are invited to check out the GDK documentation if they're interested in making - ugh - Glassware.

• Tennis
  Your head’s your racket in this rally. The gyroscope and accelerometer team up to precisely gauge the player’s head tilts to move left and right. We used the compact Min3D library on top of OpenGL to render the ball and the court.
• Balance
  Finally, a way to find out how well you’d do at Swiss finishing school. Shift your head to keep a precarious pile of shapes from toppling over. We used Box2D to build a robust physics simulation and AndEngine to do the rendering.
• Clay Shooter
  A classic shooting game with a new point of view. Say "Pull!" and a pigeon is launched in the direction you're looking. The accelerometer and some Newtonian physics help determine the pigeon's path. We used the compact Min3D library on top of OpenGL to render the game.
• Matcher
  Put your memory and concentration to the test on a twist of a classic card-matching game. The gyroscope and accelerometer team up to precisely follow the position of the player’s head. We used the Photosphere camera mode to map the surrounding cards and the compact Min3D library on top of OpenGL to render the game.
• Shape Splitter
  Have fun slicing and dicing shapes into oblivion. We detect "slices" when players move their hands in front of the Glass camera.

Thanks, Shack News.