Think Tank: Idea Dump

Being tasked to come up with 4-6 new ideas for AR games is difficult, not impossible but difficult. AR is such an untapped market because its so hard to create something that is compelling in the medium. As a result I spent most of my time thinking of ways that we can emulate the success of other mediums as well as coming up with some cool ideas that are abstracted away from all mediums. Everything is short, purposefully so, to keep anything from being too concrete - but rather to foster our own creativity to create something new and compelling.


Toy Ideas


#1 Stretch Armstrong Toy

So I spent a long time thinking about our current mechanics and coming up with places that I've seen similar success. In the 90s, Stretch Armstrongs were the shit. Everyone that had one played with it much longer than anyone should play with a toy that has a face looking like he's taking the dump to end all dumps. \

I just want to crap. Please, let me crap.

The toy was extremely simple and there was absolutely no point to the damn thing - but people played with it for tons of time. It eventually declined in popularity though they were a toy that everyone had for over a decade. Now, there's a movie coming out supposedly this year based off that toy (which by the way sounds ridiculous) but I think that there is a strong possibility for creating a toy/game where you have a character that you stretch and manipulate to create something or do something. Or even wilder - take an original stretch armstrong and put markers on the arms that way we can take the tangible stretchyness of his arms into the AR world. The possibilities are endless.

#2 Rotation Puzzle

This idea is sort of out of the blue compared to the other ideas floating around the class but I thought it might be cool to construct a marker made of rotating circles similar to the different color tracks seen above. You'd rotate them and the things on each track would rotate with it, each track being a different marker. Lining up stuff is something people have fun doing sometimes. What we'd do with this is left up to the imagination, I'm taking a shot at it below in the Game Ideas section though. The only problem with game using this would be the lack of ability to just play it anywhere. They'd need the physical puzzle - not just a regular marker.

#3 The Holodeck

This was just an offshoot idea I had about how much I've wanted to see a good VR like environment be made. I think AR could have some functionality to create this effect though it would have to be something of an installation. I'm picturing big image markers on the walls all around you, in a room filled with little nicknacks that also have markers (you'd wear goggles or something to overlay the AR over, so you could use your normal phone camera but have the video output over your eyes so you only see what we want you to see maybe? Anyways, we could create a really cool AR art piece or maybe an environmental game where you discover a story (like Dear Esther). It doesn't lend itself great to being a toy than being sort of just an experience.

Game Ideas


#1 Torture Man

I basically came up with this based off my thought process about stretch armstrong. It was more or less just tying that toy into something that you could make a game of. This led me to thinking of things like medieval torture methods. Who doesn't love the rack?

That's right. Nobody.

So, I figured we could have some sort of game based off of how much pain you make this fake character go through. Perfect for the sadist in every family. Imagine the game Pain, but with stretching and such.

#2 Rot8

Rotation Puzzles - So called Rot8 (Ro-teight), is essentially a game based around creating the correct scene by rotating the puzzle pieces correctly. The scene could be something like a 3D city, or something abstract (making use of our ideas for procedural art maybe?) You rotate the pieces till you find the solution, things like time could be used to give the player a score (maybe load it up with achievements too?) I see it being like the game Toys or like some old puzzles that I've seen in the past (the picture I used earlier is a word puzzle using a similar concept).

#3 Spin Sykle

This one would also make use of the rotating marker piece. The idea is that you'd have something like a space ship or something on the outer ring and objects come from the center outward. Sort of like going into a wormhole or something.

It's like this but more geometery wars-like maybe? Could look cool.

So you've got your ship your rotating to pick up goodies / kill bad guys. What do you use the other rings for you ask!? You can rotate those parts of the worm hole. This means if your ship fires a laser and its not going to hit anything in the trajectory it has currently you can spin that part of the marker to line up its trajectory and hit an enemy or something. You can use this to do all sorts of cool effects manipulating what enemies / obstacles / and scenery stuff do in the game. It also could look really cool to have stuff coming out of the table or wall which is a very gratifying effect that I enjoy a lot.

Conclusion

While I did a lot of brainstorming and had other ideas here and there, these were the ones I thought were the most interesting and could be used by other creative minds to become something special. I'm always thinking of new ways to do things with this technology (especially markers, I think coming up with cool markers is the best thing that only AR has) so I will very likely be updating this blog again soon with others here and there until we've got our heading and are dead set on what we're producing.

~Joe