The Augmented Reality Games We Want to See

The game that seems to be occupying everybody’s attention right now is Pokemon Go.  The game lets you chase down Pokemon in your own community with the cute little monsters popping up on your phone’s camera.  Pokemon Go is getting gamers out of their house to exercise, meet new people, get mugged, and discover corpses.  Like many smart writers out there, we’re not terribly excited about Pokemon Go as a game as we are about Augmented Reality generally.  Augmented Reality looks like it may lead to some really interesting games (and has some terrific educational potential too).   Here are the Augmented Reality games we want to see.

Hey, Squirtle is out watering the yard! Think about how much you’d save on utility bills!

Ghostbusters

Maybe it’s because the new movie is premiering this week, but we immediately thought of Ghostbusters.  Pokemon Go already plays like a Ghostbusters game.  In that game, supernatural creatures populate your neighborhood and you travel around capturing them.  Ghostbusters could take this same dynamic and allow you to trap ghosts instead.  Trapping ghosts could lead to greater revenue, enabling you to purchase upgraded equipment and capture even more dangerous apparitions.  Rather than gyms like we see in Pokemon, we could have haunted houses that the gamer could visit for larger battles (though hopefully it would never happen to our house).  There could even be calls from destinations that particularly challenging ghosts were inhabiting or perhaps players could track ghosts based on PKE readings.  Now would be an awesome time for a title this to appear; whatever folks think of the upcoming movie, we expect that gamers will still be excited to actually be a Ghostbuster.

Ghostbusting around the house would be pretty awesome.

Fallout

Fallout is a little more complex, but it would be very cool to imagine our neighborhood as a post-apocalyptic wasteland (rather than waiting for designers to choose our city).  Rather than Pokemon, you could have the whole spectrum of wasteland inhabitants to battle.  Having the game actually change your neighborhood into a post-apocalyptic wasteland on your screen would be excellent but not likely.  It’d be more likely to see your neighborhood with an occasional monster popping up.  However, your NPC partner could appear alongside you as you travel around (though, yeah, if you were romantically involved…that could get weird).  Raider camps, robots, and deathclaws could populate the game as you venture around collecting resources to enhance your settlement or shelter.  Perhaps you could also align yourself with various factions to complete quests for different groups while completing the game as well.  Fallout already demonstrated the ability to adapt the gameplay successfully with Fallout Shelter.  Fallout Augmented Reality seems to us like a naturally next step.

Honestly, I think what we’d like most about an Augmented Reality Fallout game would be the chance to hang out with Nick Valentine.

The Walking Dead

Our idea for a Walking Dead game is pretty similar to our idea for the Ghostbusters game but rather than have ghosts to battle, you’d simply have zombies to battle (or avoid).  Here we envision a game taking place soon after the zombie outbreak starts.  Neighborhoods would still be functioning but zombie appearances would be increasing with zombies popping up on your map.  Game quests could send you on rescue or scavenging missions, rewarding you for visiting various locations with the opportunity to upgrade items or your home.  It could really interesting if the game could incorporate your own house as well, letting you fortify doors and windows against invading zombies.  Hordes could populate different areas, making them impassible.  Alliances and rivalries could be built between different gamers.  For these weeks we have to survive between Walking Dead seasons, this game could be the perfect way to pass the time.

See how much fun they’re having? Imagine how much fun you’d have fighting zombies in your own house!

The Sims

The Sims seems like an easy fit for Augmented Reality and the idea of seeing your Sims on a three dimensional tabletop model of their house rather than a two dimensional television screen is cool…. but we’re thinking bigger.  Okay, this may be a little bit creepy, but you know how fun it is to build a little house and have your Sims populate it?  Imagine if those Sims lived in your house.  Rather than coming home and turning on the game, you’d see your Sims as soon as you walked in your door.  It might require building your house in a Sims game first and then placing your Sims inside, but then you’d have some awesome roommates.  The could go about their days while you went about yours.  They wouldn’t pay rent but they wouldn’t eat your food or hog the TV either.  You could just walk through your house, watching them on your screen as they go through their routines, changing their behavior as you need and seeing the results firsthand in your home.  We know Will Wright is pretty cool with Augmented Reality, maybe he could be talked into it.

The Sims going about their day in your home could get kinda freaky. But we bet it’d be fun.