For the past couple of GDCs I’ve attended, I’ve been shown a demo of a game called Reality Clash from developer Reality Gaming Group. It can pretty easily be described as “Pokemon GO meets Call of Duty" as it’s a location-based augmented reality game that has you battling against other players not with little pocket monsters but with an assortment of bad ass weaponry. Reality Clash went through beta testing late last year and then soft-launched in selected territories this past January, but today it has gone live in an official capacity in the UK as part of its staggered worldwide rollout. Here is a brief trailer giving you an idea of what Reality Clash is all about.
What struck me as most interesting in my demos of Reality Clash is how the game actually creates this virtual battleground for you, almost like a virtual laster tag arena. This means you don’t have to find actual physical objects or buildings in the real world to duck and cover behind, it’s all virtual but you act out the battle in the physical world in a very real way. As in you’ll physically duck down in the real world to duck behind a virtual barrier in the game and take cover. It’s incredibly convincing and means you just need a little bit of open space to battle it out with someone else in a very adrenalized and satisfying gunfight.
One other really cool feature in Reality Clash is that, despite being designed for person-to-person interaction in the real world, you can also link up with other players over the internet and battle it out even if you’re in different parts of the world. You’ll be in your real world area, they’ll be in theirs wherever they may be, but you’ll both be beamed into the same virtual arena to duel it out. I love the concept of Reality Clash and the execution both from just a technical perspective and an entertainment perspective is really impressive. I’d love for this game to take off in a big way so that every time I’m heading down to the market to grab some milk I could find myself in the midst of a heated virtual gun battle.
If you’re in the UK, or in the previous soft-launch markets Australia and New Zealand, you can check out Reality Clash for yourself with the link below on both iOS and Android, and look for it to roll out to more territories including the US over the next several months.
iTunes App Store Link: Reality Clash: AR Combat Game, Free
Google Play Store Link: Reality Clash: AR Combat Game, Free
Inventive. I'm not going to pretend is doesn't give me the same kind of pause that parts of the Fortnite live-action commercials did. They were mostly okay until it was NOT an abandoned town without context. When it took people in an otherwise peaceful setting and presented them having fun shooting each other in anarchic chaos. It just creeped me out.
When you make that real-life in real neighborhoods... do I want impressionable people loving the act of using realistic guns to kill each other in and around my neighborhood even if it is virtual? This particular game does well to have some abstract bits laid over things and most people are well-adjusted, but makes me think a bit if there are some lines not worth crossing in the future.
Interesting thoughts.
Here I was more focused on how odd these people are going to look, and whether they’ll duck and dodge their way into traffic...