'Life of George' Is an iPhone Game That Uses Real Legos [PICS]

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The game is the first fully-integrated digital-to-physical game from Lego, and follows the exploits of George, “a software developer by day and adventurer by night” through his travels to places like Hawaii and New York. In each location, George takes some snapshots of things you find there and fills up his virtual scrapbook.

Game play involves you building the things George wants pictures of, and then taking pictures of your creations with your iPhone or iPod touch. Each thing you build is timed, and you're assigned a score for your creation based on accuracy and speed.

The game was released in October, and recently walked away with an award at SXSWi in the Amusement category, and made its way to our San Francisco Mashable office for a test drive.

How it works

Tapping on a blank square in George's scrapbook brings up an object for you to build. Once you're shown the object, a timer starts counting down how long you have to finish building the palm tree, taxi cab, or hulu girl.

Things you build are placed on a special mat once you're done. The mat works as a green screen of sorts, with dots and color so that the app knows you've created the right object with the right blocks. The game scores you based on the amount of time you spend building as well as the accuracy of your creation.

Harder than it looks

At first glance, you may think Life of George is a game for children, but the game is actually designed for players aged 14 and up. While nothing you build in the game is terribly complex, when you add in the timed element into the game play building some of George's requests can be pretty challenging.

The game has both a novice and an expert mode. We were able to build everything within the allotted time, but were never fast enough to earn more than three stars for any of our creations. With a little practice we could probably up our star score, but getting a five star rating would definitely be a challenge.

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The block and board portion of Life of George is available now from Lego stores and online for $29.99, and the accompanying app is available for free for the iPhone and iPod touch. You can also follow George's exploits and get hints on upcoming game additions on his Facebook page.