“There is so much happening in fields such as product design or motion graphics for instance … that it would be a waste not to draw inspiration from them.”

— Geert Nellen

My first — and ongoing — reaction?

Yes!

Now we are getting somewhere!

“We noticed that infographics were starting to become an art form, and were slowly increasing to appear in mainsteam media,” notes lead designer Nellen. “We thought that it would be fun to use them as an aesthetic in a game.”

This line of thought led to the creation of PS Vita platform puzzler Metrico, and its ‘Input Morphing’ game mechanic. Essentially, as players move their character around Metrico’s world, the bar charts and visual aids shift to match elements of your movement. It’s then all down to experimenting with which movements make what happen.

… “The rules are consistent throughout the game,” Nellen notes, “but it’s not like every bar diagram will go down on jumping, and every pie chart will fill up by walking left. That would become stale within five puzzles. If it is that predictable, you’ll end up making just another action puzzler, but with different visuals.”

For the Digital Dreams, Metrico needed to feel much more unique than that, and offer an experience unlike any other. “Metrico’s mindset is like that,” Nellen adds. “We just like players to explore and experiment. We want them to think outside of the box and feel smart after they’ve figured everything out themselves.”

… Metrico is due for release on the PS Vita in early 2014.

[source: Mike Rose @ Gamasutra]

Yes. Count me in — I want this.