Thomas B.
One of the good things about living in 2012 is that I get to experience the crazy sci-fi stuff I was only reading about as a teen. Augmented reality is one of those, and I’ll post more examples of how I use it for games in the coming months. Most people associate it with software overlaying virtual images with your real visual environment, but sound can be pretty badass too, as Zombies, run! demonstrates.
The app
I learned of this mix between a personal trainer and a geocaching app on Google+ through one Christophe Mouchel, who worked a bit on the game. After paying 8 Swiss Francs, I downloaded the pretty hefty app from the AppStore and setup was very easy. I activated the GPS, picked the first mission, my usual running music playlist and started running. At first, it felt a bit like listening to an audio book or radio play: you hear dialogue, sound effects, and are immediately put in the center of the story. You are a runner in a post-apocalyptic setting, trying to gather supplies to earn your way into the last remaining survivors settlement and escape the hordes of zombies that are out to get you. Actors talk to you directly, describing the situation, your surroundings etc. It’s really well done and a bit weird as I’m used to listening to music while running and not to English people asking me to go explore fictional abandoned hospitals. The app tracks your movement with GPS and doesn’t actually care which direction you’re running, or how your physical environment is laid out. It calculates your speed and distance run, timing the voice messages so that you run for about half an hour over the duration of the first mission. As you run, your usual music plays, audio messages let you know that you collect items like in a video game, and sometimes your friendly radio operator freaks out and warns you of zombies coming at you. Beeping ensues, you start hearing their growls and you are told to Run!
The running dead (© Cédric Ferrand)
Escaping zombies was not that hard, they came in pretty late and there were not that many of them. I’m sure there will be more as I progress through the story, but the fact they came in by surprise made the impromptu interval training really fun. Once home, I could drag and drop the loot to various buildings on the settlement map in order to increase their stats, the town’s population and unlock new missions. I’d recommend reading the Codex before doing that to optimize resource allocations. Overall, I was happily surprised by the writing, the acting and the sound effects. While I just expected frantic action, there actually was a real story unfolding and following it was really fun. There is a very nice “bleed effect”between the characters encouraging your character to make it alive to the town and you as player being encouraged to exercise. I ran at night and I am sure that having scary music instead of my usual hip-hop would have made the experience even more immersive. So the gamist in you will get the motivation to gather more item and “level up”, the immersionist will pretend that what the voices in the headphones tell them is real and the dramatist will keep running because they want to hear “what happens next” in the story.
Bottom line : this thing makes running more fun, and without making you look weird with VR goggles. OK, I did sprint through downtown in very odd places but hey, I was being chased by zombies!
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