Augmented Zombies – ARhrrrr

When it comes to augmented reality, hunting ghosts is fun – but there’s nothing to beat a bit of full on zombie action. Such as ARhrrrr, an AR game project from Georgia Tech’s Augmented Environments Lab (AEL) and SCAD-Atlanta’s Interactive Design & Game Development department.

ARhrrrr is a first person augmented reality shooter. The game uses a special map on which the camera of your mobile device overlays a 3D city. And, of course, zombies. The camera gives you a bird’s eye view of the city, as if you were a helicopter pilot. By moving the camera you “fly” around the city shooting zombies and saving civilians. But don’t stay in one spot too long or the zombies start throwing things back at you (best not ask exactly what bloody things they are). There’s even a “night mode” where you use your mobile device to shine a spotlight from your virtual helicopter.

A very nice feature is the use of physical props. You can use skittles (the sweets) and place them on the map to represent bombs which explode killing zombies. Or civilians.

AEL say:

By merging graphics with props in the physical world, handheld Augmented Reality games pull the player through the small screen and into a larger merged play-space. Our primary motivation for this AR game was to explore fast-action first-person augmented reality, where the camera controls and movement that would typically require a mouse and keyboard are handled directly by simply moving the device.

ARhrrrr is a submission to Indiecade 2009. At the moment it’s just a proof of concept demo because “there’s no commercial device that can run such stuff yet”. Hopefully that will change soon.