Pandora AR

Pandora AR (working title) is an outdoor smartphone game based on the real-world game Pandora which is held by a student association in the Netherlands. It combines features from Geocaching and Gotcha; there is a physical clue-to-clue puzzle aspect and an assassination aspect to it.

Pandora

Pandora is a puzzle and assassination game; it is held every year in Enschede, the Netherlands by the IT student association Inter-/Actief/. For four nights in a row teams of 3-6 students puzzle and assassinate each other based on a storyline create by the people organising the event. Physical clues are placed every night on the campus of the University of Twente and the initial clue is given by the organisation. Each clue is a puzzle leading to a certain location on the campus, where the next one can be found. During the puzzling, the teams can kill each other based on a License-To-Kill system: if you get killed, you hand over the license and cannot kill anyone else yourself for the rest of that day. Puzzles and kills yield points, etcetera. But the bottom line is: intense fun, paranoia, excitement and frustration over both puzzles and ambushes.

Removing the time and place

The main problem with Pandora is its requirements on the physicality and time it is held; clues need to be placed on buildings, assassinations use toy weapons and people wander around at night using flashlights on buildings. These features make it highly suspicious for any guard or policeman as you might imagine. There is a way to remove requirements and shuffle the game rules a bit so it largely keeps its charm, while making it a feasible game without getting arrested; use augmented reality.

AR puzzling

Pandora AR replaces the physical clues with virtual ones. The `rough' location combined with location features discovered by the smartphone's camera yield the clues and transfer them into the digital realm. For this to work, clues cannot be hidden at difficult-to-reach parts of the building because of the suspicious nature of wandering around buildings. The game can still be played at night, but the focus should shift to the day. Puzzles can also make more use of the location-awareness of the whole game system, which opens up opportunities for creating puzzles.

AR assassination

Assassination in Pandora is a messy business, there is a lot of action involved which means it is a highly interruptive occasion. To keep things in check, safe zones are named which normally translate into buildings where lectures and seminars are held. Because of the running aspect, the assassination part in AR is translated more into tagging. If within reach of a target, the assassin can "charge up" to kill. The victim will get a soft indication on his/her phone and can block it easily, if detected. This way no real hectic situations need to exist, but it should be tested of course, you never know.

Will be continued.