Search is an augmented reality scavenger hunt game.
A creator walks around, see an area where they want to leave a digital object. They take a photo of that place, leave an object, hinting at where this object is located. Once a searcher enters the area, they can see challenges in that area and take out their phone to try and catch a photo of that object.
Process of review! Players are encouraged to accept or decline a submitted challenge they've created and that other players have participated in. You can swipe left (decline) or right (accept) to a submission that someone has made on your challenge. We put the players in charge of this system to facilitate a more community stimulated game.
Search wasn't initially an augmented reality scavenger hunt game. It has gone through several iterations. It started as simply a photo hunt game where users can take a picture of an object or a picture at a particular angle for other nearby users to find and try to emulate.
We looked into Vuforia, Layar, Wikitude, and other incredibly ready-made AR libraries. Given our budget (we really didn't have one), we went with using Unity, a game development platform that was free to use.
Challenges that went with using Unity:
- Learning a new language and developing on a new environment
- Importing Unity in to Android Studio
- Finding up to date resources online in relation to Android + Unity
- ...
This was a month long project presented at Google on Coalition for Queens Android 3.3 Demo Day. We wanted to demonstrate a project that was technically challenging and fun to tackle within the time span.