Augmented Reality Game
A Video Game played by way of an Augmented Reality overlay on the real world, either displayed on a hand-held device like a smart phone, or via specialized goggles or other vision systems. Locations and other elements in the real world become part of the game which the player must visit and/or interact with, and the game's action is assumed to take place in "real" space as opposed to a virtual space belonging to the game.
Some games encourage team or cooperative play, automatically identifying other players and offering interaction with them.
As of the early 2020s, the most prominent developer of Augmented Reality Games is Niantic.
Contrast Virtual Reality games, which replace the player's reality with their own instead of supplementing it.
Not to be confused with Alternate Reality Game. See also Deep-Immersion Gaming.
Real World Examples
- Pokémon Go: Players take the role of pokémon trainers, catching wild pokémon and training them up for fights.
- Harry Potter: Wizards Unite: As a member of the Statute of Security Task Force, you are part of a vast effort fighting the Calamity, which threatens to reveal the Wizarding World to the Muggles. You are tasked with tracking down magical Traces and recovering them, and facing dark forces in the mysterious Fortresses which have appeared everywhere in the world. Unfortunately, it was shut down in January 2022 after only a few years of operation.
- In Ingress and its successor/reboot Ingress Prime, players are members of one of two factions who use portal technology to conduct a battle of ideologies by claiming territories one marker at a time.
- SpecTrek: players track down and capture ghosts which could appear anywhere.
- A cleverly disguised exercise game, Zombies, Run! casts the player as a courier between surviving outposts of living humans who must run from destination to destination to avoid the slowly-shambling hordes of zombies that populate the countryside.
- In September 2019, gaming/technology company Illumix announced that it will be releasing an Augmented Reality version of Five Nights at Freddy's, called Five Nights at Freddy's AR: Special Delivery. The teaser trailer hints that it will be available in October 2019.[when?]
- Minecraft Earth, an AR version of Minecraft, was in beta as of the end of 2019. More info here.
- Bravely Default has an optional AR mode, which gives basic intros about the playable characters.
- Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir comes with an "AR notebook" which is used in full conjunction with the game.
- The Nintendo 3DS game Face Raiders edges sideways into this genre.
Fictional Examples
Anime and Manga
- Den-noh Coil, which is set in both reality and Virtual Reality, includes points where the two overlap and effectively become Augmented Reality.
- Dueling in Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal mainly takes place in augmented reality, where the holographic monsters are capable of damaging the environment without actually blasting a crater in the ground where your monster used to be. And it only takes an eyepiece called the "duel gazer" to see one of these duels.
Live-Action TV
- An incredibly extensive and sophisticated Augmented Reality game set in the Spanish city of Grenada is at the center of the Korean series Memories of the Alhambra.