We love seeing different ways people find to display their favorite games. A few months ago, we saw someone playing Doom on a volumetric display, which gave it a cool hologram-like look. Now, someone has constructed something a little easier to build with a 9x9x9 cube of LEDs that you can game on.

The Holocube is a 9x9x9 LED grid that runs Doom

As spotted by Hackster, this cool cube comes to us via OhmBrew. The creator had previously made an 8x8x8 version, but wanted to revisit it and add an extra layer all around to make it a 9x9x9 LED cube.

Here's everything they used to make this awesome project:

• 729 RGB LEDs (WS2811)
• Organized into 9 3x3x9 Towers that can be easily replaced for maintenance
• Sound
• Arduino Nano ESP32-S3
  • BLE support for two MagicseeR1 gamepads for 1 or 2 player games
• Custom App Management
  • Menu interface allows up to 7 Apps (1 per “octant”), with one octant for next-page
  • Select app to run using game loop() technique
  • Custom graphics implementation using Meshes
  • Custom 3D rendering engine using raycasting and perspective drawing for true 3D games

As you can see from the video above, it's totally possible to game on this thing. While Doom is a little pixel-intensive for the grid, simpler games like Pong and Snake look great and use the 3D space to great visual effect.

While the creator hasn't posted a strict step-by-step guide on how to recreate this, they did post their process on the OhmBrew blog, which makes for a great read if you're interested in how they achieved this. And if you think this is a weird way to play an FPS classic, be sure to check out these other awesome ways people have played Doom.