Just last week developer CD Projekt Red in collaboration with their in-house studio Spokko Games announced The Witcher: Monster Slayer for mobile devices. The easiest way to describe The Witcher: Monster Slayer is that it’s like The Witcher does Pokemon GO. It’s a location-based augmented reality game that has you wandering around the real world and engaging in battles with all manner of crazy enemies from The Witcher universe. Alongside that unveiling last week was a very cool live action trailer which gave you a good feel of what the game was all about, but there’s also this more direct gameplay-oriented trailer below if you want to see very clearly how The Witcher: Monster Slayer plays.

As someone who liked Pokemon GO well enough but definitely didn’t LOVE it, I think The Witcher: Monster Slayer looks far more interesting for a number of reasons. First and foremost is that the combat looks a lot more complex and it feels like there’s more of an “RPG" feel to the game. Well, if you liked the look of The Witcher: Monster Slayer as well and would like to take it for an early test drive, the game has now been made available in the New Zealand App Store as part of a limited soft launch. It does not appear to be location locked either, so if you simply have an NZ iTunes account you should be able to check it out without actually being in New Zealand.

The impressions from early players in our forums have been really positive so far, with someone even commenting that it felt like a mixture of the best elements from Pokemon GO and The Elder Scrolls: Blades mixed together. You can find a download link for the soft launch version in the thread in our forums, and if you do take it for an early test drive be sure to leave your thoughts there as well so Spokko Games can see them. We’ll continue keeping an eye on how The Witcher: Monster Slayer continues to shape up.