TimeWarp - an explorative outdoor
Mixed Reality game
TimeWarp is an explorative outdoor Mixed Reality game that supports spatial, temporal and social presence.
The background story of the game is the tale of the Heinzelmännchen of Cologne. This tale is about small elves, which helped the citizen of Cologne during night, although they were actually never observed. However, they suddenly disappeared, because a nosy tailor's wife tried to have a peep on them.
We extend this legend by spreading the rumor that the Heinzelmännchen never left Cologne, but fell into time holes. Thus, they are still in the city, but trapped in different time periods. The goal of the game is to find the elves within the different time periods and rescue them by solving small challenges. Therefore, each player is equipped with a Mixed Reality system, which enables the player to see the elves and to visit different time periods.
The key challenges this game addresses are:
- Implementing an interactive MR game in an urban environment - being in a public, uncontrolled and unrestricted area make high demands on the technology.
- Exploring MR in edutainment - which features make a mobile MR game successful.
- Investigating the MR-mediated user experience - how to support temporal and social presence using MR.
The story reflects the design objectives and decisions made during conception:
- make the game play take place within the city,
- develop rich mixed reality experiences exploring the full potential of 3D animation and spatial sound,
- make the game foster temporal, physical and social presence.
Speaker
Anne-Kathrin Braun