Lo and behold, someone has invented the ‘board game carpet’

Have you ever wanted to play a board game using your floor? No, us neither, but that hasn’t stopped homeware firm Hillarys from announcing its invention of the ‘board game carpet’, a carpet you can – yes – use to play board games.

Wait a minute, you say, can’t you use all carpets to play board games? As in, you just put the board on top of the carpet? A-ha, says Hillarys, but what if the carpet WAS the board game?

The board game carpet has a matrix of LED lights as its bottom layer, which light up to form the boards and pieces of games. The size of the game can be adjusted, meaning you won’t lose your virtual pawns under the sofa.

There’s also no risk of carpet burn from particularly animated sessions either, as the game-playing is actually done on a smartphone app, which it’s suggested could double as a second screen for additional player boards in more complex titles. The app will feature online multiplayer, so you can hook into what’s sure to become a thriving community of people who play board games using their carpet.

While the first set of games proposed for the board game carpet is predictably obvious – chess, draughts and Snakes & Ladders – Hillarys insists that the tech could be harnessed by other developers to allow both “classic and contemporary games to be played using the vast expanse of the floor as a playing area”.

The board game carpet is only a concept for now but, who knows, maybe you’ll be rolling one out in your living room in the not-too-distant future.