Telephone Detective
An AI murder mystery played through a 1940s rotary telephone — every case generated fresh, no two alike.
Georg Luif
Creative technologist
Vienna, Austria
I make
- games & installations
- electronics & robotic birds
- websites & AI
- 3D-printing & wood objects
Now on the bench
Mattersburg’s main square around 1930 as a tactile model — put a house on the plate and it tells its story.
View project →Three autonomous rovers share one charger — a robotic installation where care, not competition, is the game.
View project →Jugendstil brooches in copper, solder mask, and light — each a small autonomous player that senses its kin nearby.
View project →An animatronic crow head — three servos, a 3D-printed frame, and far too much super glue.
View project →An AI murder mystery played through a 1940s rotary telephone — every case generated fresh, no two alike.
View project →I build playful machines.
Researcher & lecturer, University of Applied Arts Vienna
Founder, Design Studio Latinada
Formerly USC Game Innovation Lab (Walden)
Shipped games on PC, PS4, Xbox One
The studio — four tables
Everything I make starts on one of four actual tables in my studio. Pick one and see what’s on it.
Games Table
Everything here you can play.
Shipped games, museum installations, jam prototypes and the odd VR experiment — built in Unity, Unreal and the browser since 2011. Some are serious, most are playful, a few are played through strange controllers.
Pick something up off the table — or a book off the shelf.
Drones & Rabbits in Shannon’s Labyrinth
A situated game of drones and white rabbits that turns the Postsparkasse hall into Shannon’s labyrinth.
Grounded Birds
A multiplayer RPG about flightless birds hopping, gearing up, and making a last stand against extinction.
A Leap Forward
A real-time strategy game played from the ground: give your rabbits tools and they work out the rest, while the foxes close in.
Goal oriented AI
Unity prototypes of Goal Oriented Action Planning — agents that weigh costs and plan their own route to a goal.
Ruben’s Puppets
Real-time strategy meets third-person action in a world of wooden puppets at war. My USC thesis game.
VR Airplane
Building my own VR flight simulator, from the cockpit screens to scripted flight physics.
Walden, a game
PlayStation 4 and Xbox One work on Tracy Fullerton’s Walden, a game, at the USC Game Innovation Lab.
Goldrushers
A Goldrush themed local multiplayer brawler for PC and Mac.
Petit oiseau
A quiet exploration game about changing a place through your choices, made in Tracy Fullerton’s class at USC.
Coyote
A wooden board game about smuggling people across the border, and the hard choices it forces.
Bluetooth Microcontroller to Google Cardboard
A Google Cardboard VR game played with a home-made Bluetooth controller: turn a knob to set the time of day.
A Walk At Dusk
An ambient mobile piece made in 48 hours at the GettyJam, about looking longer at a Caspar David Friedrich painting. Second place.
Reflektion
A non-linear film with a real actress, steered through a rotary phone.
Beyond The Door
Interactive installation with a large format projection and the Kinect – interface.
Early Ruben prototypes
Gameplay from a 2014 from-scratch prototype: gathering, transport, travel and a shop.
Frau im Mond
The formal elements of a silent film from 1929 are applied to a video game film from 2012.
Transformation Gas
Edward Hopper’s Gas (1940) rebuilt as a melancholy virtual scene, performed live in a game engine.
Krallenspiel
A speculation game for the METAmART art market: buy art spheres, chase the golden Porsche.
Soldering Table
Electronics & robotic birds.
Custom-built electronics — ESP32s, Arduinos and Raspberry Pis. I design and solder my own PCBs, from sensors and controllers to robotic birds.
Pick something up off the table.
Animatronic Crow Version 2
An animatronic crow head — three servos, a 3D-printed frame, and far too much super glue.
Custom Tracking System – Vive VR
Tracking small robots with the lighthouses of an old HTC Vive and a few cheap photodiodes on a home-made PCB.
Ludic Apparatus
Jugendstil brooches in copper, solder mask, and light — each a small autonomous player that senses its kin nearby.
Parasitic Power: When Your Phone Charges Your Artwork
A 48-hour prototype where your charging phone quietly powers the artwork underneath it.
Psycholudic Zoo
Three autonomous rovers share one charger — a robotic installation where care, not competition, is the game.
Building a Custom Time Tracker
I needed a physical time tracker that could sync with a custom web system.
The EGC Device
A classroom on a PCB: ESP32-C3, display, rainbow LEDs and a buzzer — students build a playable game in a day.
Crafting a Raven: An Animatronic Assistant
An animatronic raven assistant that talks via ChatGPT — the hard part was not looking like a chicken.
Ludic Hardware Experiments
Ten-plus custom controllers and sensor boards on tailor-made PCBs, used by students in their projects.
Professional Table
Research, teaching & client work.
Research and teaching at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, plus prototypes built for clients and collaborators.
Pick something up off the table.
LUDIC PSY AI ENGINE
A face reading becomes a Godot level — mechanics, creatures, and terrain, written live.
Psycholudic Shuffle × EEG Hyperscanning
Three players, three EEGs: gameplay and brain activity recorded in sync during a role-switching card game.
Psycholudic Shuffleboard
An oak Schnapsen board with NFC under the cards — gameplay logged move by move for research.
[A]I Maze
A mirror labyrinth built around live face recognition, asking how it feels to be read by machines.
Game Design Club @ Experimental Game Cultures
A hands-on club at the Angewandte where students prototype, playtest, and iterate under playful constraints.
Live Polling App
A live polling tool for presentations — browser fingerprints for votes, Chart.js for the results.
“Narrenturm” Mindgame: Mindworm Blaster
Two mindworms, driven by 300,000 points of EEG data, eat away at a building in augmented reality and the browser.
Dérive AI – Performing with GPT-2
A performative card game coupling GPT-2 poetry, AI ethics, and an interpassive mind-reading device.
Websites
Websites for a migration conference, a dance school, a game agency, a lab supplier and more.
Fabrication Table
Wood, prints & lamps.
The physical side of the studio: CNC milling, 3D printing and laser cutting — one-off brackets, solid-wood controllers, small furniture.
Pick something up off the table.
Häuserchronik Mattersburg
Mattersburg’s main square around 1930 as a tactile model — put a house on the plate and it tells its story.
Latinada Lampshades
Lampshades from Latinada, my design studio for home decor and artisanal work.
Building a Custom Wooden Controller: CNC, ESP32
A controller in solid wood: CNC-milled body, a quality joystick, three buttons, an ESP32 inside.
Schooled in play.
MFA Interactive Media & Games, USC
Thesis: Ruben’s Puppets
Fulbright scholar
Mag.art. Digitale Kunst, University of Applied Arts Vienna
Thesis: Beyond The Door
Worked with
Want to reach out? If you have questions, ideas, or a project in mind — I’d like to hear it.
Get in touch →