Google Glass Mini-Games Show Off Capabilities, But You’ll Probably Look Ridiculous Playing Them

screen shot via YouTube/Google Developers

If you’re one of the lucky few who already own Google Glass, you now have some games at your disposal, straight from Google.

The games are simple: they’re easy to learn, quick to play and visually minimalistic. They’re not going to provide users with hours of fun, and they’re not supposed to.

Instead, the main goal of these games is to “inspire” other developers by showing off what Google Glass is capable of. The games use like voice commands, sensors and quick segues between tasks, Glass features that Google hopes outside developers will utilize.

Looking odd in public is just an added bonus. The five games require players to bob and tilt their heads, karate chop at nothing, and state commands like “pull” and “bang.” Here’s a quick rundown of the games:

Tennis lets you use your head as a virtual tennis racket. It gauges your head movements and identifies your surrounding area so you can hit the ball back and forth to any object in front of you.

Balance requires you to shift your head in order to keep an imaginary stack of objects balanced on your noggin.

Clay Shooter lets you launch clay pigeons into the air, take aim and say “bang” to shoot them down.

Matcher is like a classic card-matching game that tests your memory, but this version also requires you to move your head around.

Shape Splitter, like Fruit Ninja, requires you to slice air in front of you chop shapes.

The games don’t seem very practical for actual play – they’re probably a little too weird to do in public, and if you’re not in public you might as well play better games on a computer, gaming system or other gadget – but they do seem to serve their purpose.

Each game shows off specific Glass abilities and how they might be incorporated into games and other programs. The games themselves might not be great, but they open the door to better ones.