Cooperative AR

Something that I find really cool with Augmented Reality is the potential for it to be used cooperatively. There are already some games which use AR in this way that I'm going to list below, so here they are:

Ingress

I've mentioned Ingress in a previous post, but I'm going to mention it again. Ingress is an AR game developed by Niantic Labs (yes, those guys making Pokemon Go!) that is played through your phone, with the goal being to 'capture' as many portals as possible. There are two factions for players to join and once assigned to a side you can begin to play with other members of your team.

Ingress is great because while you can play it alone, it has such an amazingly large community aspect to it also. There have been meetups all over the globe where players gather to capture portals together, and networks have been set up to help coordinate ways for teams to create larger portals - even if they're in completely different countries.


DRAKERZ-Confrontation

DRAKERZ-Confrontation is the first Augmented Reality game playable for PC. Each player has their own set of physical playing cards which are then brought to life when scanned by a camera. It's like the real life Yugi-Oh esque card game we always dreamed of! 

Players each have their own cards, and while playing the game via webcam they can see each other's creatures come to life and battle it out on the playing field. It takes the traditional card game but also adds an extra visual thrill to it, which is pretty sweet! 

Run an Empire

Similar to Ingress in the capturing land category; Run an Empire is an iOs and Android game which revolves around running to take control of land in your area. If you run around an area, you capture it - simple! Though be careful - others in your area can also run around that same route and take it from you. 

Newly captured areas are more vulnerable and easier to capture than the areas that have been run around a lot, so it's important that you retrace your steps and go over routes often if you want to keep them as part of your Empire.

Tourality

Tourality is quite an old AR game in which you can take part in treasure hunts with friends. Teams of up to 40 people can come together and hunt down specific locations that are set on a map via your phone's GPS feature.

The screen shows the location of both the locations you need to go to as well as the locations of other players so that you can see how close your competition is, and the app also records how much time it takes players to reach each landmark. Any achievements are also shown to all participants on their screen, so they'll know when someone has found part of the treasure. 

Tourality doesn't really use Augmented Reality in the same way as the other games listed as it primarily uses GPS, but it is great to see how the us of AR has evolved since this game was made.

I'm going to keep on the lookout for more AR games, but these were just a few that caught my eye for now. :)