Now on Kickstarter: Can You See Me Now, a crowdfunder to update a groundbreaking mixed reality game of the same name for the modern era of iOS and Android. Launched in the early 2000s, it helped inspire the creation of Pokémon Go, but Can You See Me Now is much more accessible:
"It's hide-and-seek with the hiders online and the seekers in the real world," veteran virtual world dev Jim Purbrick explains, "but having two parallel realities and the players relying on information leaking between the realities make it interesting and feel like each reality is haunted by ghostly presences from the other." Purbrick worked on the original game from UK tech art collective Blast Theory before going on to work at Linden Lab and Meta, and will also help develop this modern update.
In the original version, the real world runners were kitted out with bulky PCs and GPS trackers, but with the reboot, it will just require a smartphone to run. The gameplay creates the cool and eerie experience of existing in two realities at once:
"It was fun and interesting to get glimpses and audio from a city you were exploring online," as Jim puts it. "The asymmetry of experience and immersion was interesting too." Especially when the runners suddenly come up against impassable barriers like walls or traffic that aren't not depicted in the virtual city map. (Kinda reminds me of this London mixed reality foot scene from the Mission Impossible movies.)
Gameplay from the original version below. The Kickstarter was just funded, but there's still hundreds of supporter slots available to be part of the project -- including an option to be one of the first real runners in Bright, UK when the game relaunches!
This game sounds like great fun... alas, when I go to Kickstarter, all of the possible pledges to support its resurrection are greyed out, not that their pledge period has ended. I still plan to look for updates, and hope they can create some noise once the game is available.
Posted by: Bruce | Sunday, May 26, 2024 at 11:22 AM