We submitted our first pitch today! We went the route of a multiplayer AR game complete with a few mind-numbing puzzles inspired by Nancy Drew combined with a nuclear meltdown.
Two people are required at minimum; one person will be trapped in a dark room with an AR device, and the person outside will have a phone with complementary information.
The players are part of an emergency team sent in to stop a nuclear meltdown.They accomplish this by solving puzzles together against a timer. Each player has different information and by combining their knowledge and communicating they are able to advance through the experience.
A nuclear power plant (due to extreme weather or terrorist act or similar) has lost most of its power and its ability to cool down the radioactive material. If this material is not cooled down in time, an explosion will take out the entire city.
The AR player has to enter a darkened, contaminated area and is supplied with an ‘oxygen tank’ (a haptic vest). The AR player, once suited up, will physically be directed into a separate, dark room filled with glow-in-the-dark markers. They scan the markers to bring up puzzles. The phone functions as a torch/room scanner and they cannot see anything beyond what’s in their phone screen.
The player outside the room has a digital casebook of information which has instructions for the person inside the AR room, including blueprints of the completed puzzles. The first puzzle they need to solve already has the blueprint unlocked; when the AR player completes a puzzle, they unlock the blueprint for the next puzzle. Only the AR player can see the puzzles and only the player outside can see the blueprints.
However, the AR player has an oxygen limit. They are awarded a set amount of oxygen upon completion of puzzles. As their oxygen falls, the haptic vest vibrates in time with a quickened heartbeat. If they run out of oxygen before they solve the puzzles, it’s game over!