Over a year ago, augmented reality (AR) gaming technology was put in the spotlight by the runaway success of Nintendo and Niantic Labs’ “Pokémon GO.” Said mobile app as of today may not be the social juggernaut that it used to be, but it has not begun to really fade yet, proving that AR is a gaming concept that could last long with a popular brand tied to it.
Other media companies have decided to make their own attempt at catching lightning in a bottle akin to “Pokémon Go.” One of them is AMC, producer of the zombie apocalypse TV series “The Walking Dead.” Yes, the newest major franchise to do mobile AR gaming is “The Walking Dead: Our World.”
Quirky trailer
If a mobile gamer has had previous experience with “Pokémon Go,” then that appears to be the same deal with “The Walking Dead: Our World,” developed jointly by AMC and Next Games, a video game studio from Finland.
The game is built upon the new AR-Kit development platform by Apple, which introduced it to their annual dev conference earlier this summer. This means of course that the “Walking Dead” mobile game will be available on iOS (Apple has already advertised it), though an Android version is also in the works.
For those who are curious, the hints of gameplay dropped during the first preview video of “The Walking Dead: Our World” would have the title as a mature and bloody take on “Pokémon Go.” Players wander about a virtual world overlaid on our own via GPS map data, but instead of catching cute critters they will be fending off randomly appearing hordes of infectious flesh-eating walkers. They can kill the zombies with weapon pickups appearing in certain locations, and even receive help from the actual characters of the “Walking Dead” TV show, appearing as NPCs.
‘Exploratory experience’
An official description of the “Walking Dead” AR mobile game pretty much sums up the events of the first game trailer above. They can run into walkers in certain locations and must defend themselves with a variety of weapons like firearms, grenades, and melee armaments like the trademark katana of Michonne from the show.
Next Games CEO Teemu Huuhtanen notes how the fans of the AMC series like the way they are asked by the show how they might live and survive the zombie apocalypse. “In this game, we aim to let players explore this hypothetical in a way they’ve never experienced before,” he said in his statement.
No release date has been released for “The Walking Dead: Our World” other than the trailer’s “Coming Soon.” The question now is whether gamers who avoided or are tired of the “Pokémon Go” idea might find this re-skin more enjoyable.
