Like the 500 million people who downloaded the thing (according to Venture Beat) and its 21 million daily users (according to SurveyMonkey), I am a little bit fascinated by Pokemon GO: the social aspect, the use of augmented reality, and the incentive to get out and wander around new and/or familiar places. It’s kind of amazing to see how many people this little free-to-play game is bringing together through a shared interest, giving folks who might otherwise have trouble socializing an easy ice breaker and an excuse to go meet people.
But one of the most interesting discussion topics that’s arisen from this Pokemon resurgence has been “This is a cool idea, but you know what I’d really love to play? (Something else) GO.”
That “something else” potential grabbed my attention. People in my office were speculating on how you would play Harry Potter GO. People I knew on Facebook were pining over mockups of Fatal Frame GO. An idea for how to make Persona GO viable came to me and still refuses to leave.
It was around this time that I realized just how versatile this GO game template could be for a number of different IPs, franchises, and fandoms beyond Pokemon — how easily a lot of other ideas could plug into this same app and get fans out and about, meeting new people through a shared AR game.
So why not explore that hypothetical rabbit hole a bit further?
What follows are six ideas for those potential GO-style games that I and the people I surveyed would love to play if they were real, all fleshed out with details on what kind of game they would be and how they might play. To help keep all of the different elements organized nice and tidy, this is the template we’re gonna work off of:
GO game template
IP: What’s the franchise that this game is wearing?
What you search for: What’s got you wandering around town on the hunt?
What you do when you find it: What’s the actual game part of this app?
How progression is measured: How do you know you’re playing well, and what keeps you coming back?
Social aspect: What excuse does the game give you to meet new people?
Style notes: How does the AR aspect work? What special effects or interfacing does this idea need?
Items/Microtransactions: What special items do players have to use on their adventures? And for the sake of keeping these hypothetical games hypothetically free to play, which of these items supply the money-making feature that entices the publisher to keep the servers on?
Without further ado…
Harry Potter GO
This was far and away the most popular answer, both in my own survey and across the internet as a whole, so it’s only fitting we start here.
IP: Harry Potter
What you search for: Horcruxes of witches/wizards both good and bad. Also fantastic beasts a la Fantastic Beasts, which you fight and/or capture.
What you do when you find it: Collect the horcruxes to learn spells from the magic user whose soul is inside. The more horcruxes of a particular witch/wizard you find, the closer you are to learning that person’s spell, or the more you power up your version of that spell if you already know it. Different spells are cast with different tracked movements, like drawing magic runes on your phone depending on what spell you want to cast. As for the beasts, fight and defeat them to earn points for your house (see below), or capture them to use as defense for different campuses (see below again).
How progression is measured: The more spells you collect and power up, the more powerful you become and the better your chance in magical duels and beast encounters. The more beasts you capture, the better you can defend or lay siege to magical campuses. And the more points you earn for your house through defeating beasts and other students in duels, the more prestige your team gets and the higher your magical level or rank grows, opening up the potential to learn even more powerful spells and encounter even more fantastic beasts.
Social aspect: Join one of the four houses — Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw, or Hufflepuff — after you learn your first spell, then battle other witches/wizards from competing houses with the spells you’ve collected and learned in the AR camera fights, in which you choose which spells to use by drawing the necessary glyphs on your screen to fling them at your opponent or defend yourself from their own offensive magic.
Gather at different magical campuses around town that act as gym-type locations, and earn points for your house by taking control of these campuses from other houses and then defeating challengers that come to wrest control back. Sort of like magical LARPing on your phones. You can also utilize beasts that you’ve captured at these campuses, either as obstacles to defend them from invading students or to help lay siege to campuses you’re trying to take for yourself.
Style notes: In magic duels, using your spells makes effects appear on the AR camera for you and your opponent. Watch offensive spells streak across the screen, or cast a defensive or support spell and watch the screen change color or take on a new frame to signify the effect. Successfully hit your opponent with a spell and there will be a glow or particle effect on them through the camera. Get hit with one yourself, and your own screen will reflect it with the same kind of visual effects.
Items/Microtransactions: Find little Pokestop-style shops hidden throughout the muggle world that will hand out free samples of different potions, sweets, and so on that aid in horcrux hunting, beast baiting, spellcasting, and so forth. Drink a Felix Felicis, for example, and be more likely to stumble across an easier to find horcrux for a short time limit. Or set out a food item as bait and be more likely to encounter a certain kind of beast in that spot, depending on the item used.
Persona GO
This one is my baby, and fleshing out the details is how this whole experiment started.
IP: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona series
What you search for: Shadows hiding around town, preying on the unsuspecting people not playing the game.
What you do when you find it: Fight Shadows with the Persona that awoke in you when you started the game, which is based on personal questions you answer to determine your arcana and which mythical/legendary figure most suits you. Maybe your answers and choices give you a few options to pick from within your assigned arcana, so you can decide which inner self to pull from your mind.
How progression is measured: Each Shadow you beat gives your Persona experience, slowly leveling it up and making it stronger, teaching it new and more powerful moves. Eventually, perhaps when your character’s level maxes out, maybe it can “awaken” and evolve into a more powerful form, like how Akihiko’s Polydeuces grows into Caesar in Persona 3, or Yosuke’s Jiraiya becomes Susano-o in Persona 4.
Social aspect: Meet up with other Persona users at Pokestop-like Velvet Room locations around town to gather healing items and get to know each other to establish social links. The arcana of these social links depends on the arcana of the other player’s Persona. The more people you meet, the more links you establish, and the more you hang out with and get to know one particular player, the deeper the link becomes between the two of you. The number and depth of links in different arcanas grow different benefits according to those arcanas, and these benefits are then passed along to you and your Persona in battles.
Style notes: As well as adding Shadows to the world, the AR aspect through the phone could distort the world a bit — add hovering black fog and random blood puddles to the scene during enemy encounters, distort the light to sickly green or yellow, maybe even distort real world details a la Photoshop filters, such as to make buildings look crooked and misshapen or replace other people in the shot with coffins. This level of effects would require incredibly advanced AR technology, of course, but it would also be incredibly awesome.
Items/Microtransactions: Visit the online store or stop by Velvet Rooms to acquire tarot cards like the the ones you sometimes find after battles in Persona 3, then use these cards to grant different environmental effects. Sword cards attract tougher red Shadows or, occasionally, loot-dropping gold Shadows, or just more Shadows overall. Cup cards reduce the number of Shadows you encounter for a while or can heal you outside of battles if you acquire them while missing HP or SP. Wand cards give you an experience multiplier for every Shadow you defeat for a short amount of time. Coin cards give you useful items that can restore HP or SP, heal status effects, guard against certain attack types, etc.
Of course, out of all of these, wand cards that grant XP bonuses won’t be available on the online store, which will keep people from buying their progress outright rather than playing the game — just like how you can’t buy new Pokemon in Pokemon GO.
Fatal Frame GO
IP: Fatal Frame
What you search for: Murderous ghosts in and around your house, or out and about around your town.
What you do when you find it: Take ghosts’ pictures until they’re defeated, but don’t let them get too close to you or you’ll take damage. Clear out all the ghosts in your vicinity for a bonus to your camera’s experience, more film, and/or charms dropped as loot, as well as for better peace of mind; but a new batch of specters returns to haunt you every night.
How progression is measured: Ghosts defeated go into an otherworldly photo album. The more ghosts you defeat, the more your album grows and the stronger your camera becomes, meaning the more film it can hold and the easier it is to fight higher level ghosts. However, advancing in the game also unlocks these higher level, scarier ghosts depending on your camera level, so the more horror you survive, the more horrifying trying to survive becomes.
Social aspect: Like Pokeballs in Pokemon GO, you need to replenish your film at stops around town. Let’s call them Dark Rooms. Here you can meet other ghost hunters and compare albums, even trade photos. The more photos of one kind of ghost you have in your album, either taken yourself or swapped with others, the easier it is to defend yourself from and defeat that kind of ghost when it reappears.
Style notes: Ghosts only appear at night or in dark places, so daytime hunting is improbable unless you’re in a basement or very dark room. Use the daylight hours to meet up with other ghost hunters, replenish your film, and generally prepare yourself for the night to come.
If you keep the game running on your phone while you’re not actively using it, it makes a sound whenever ghosts come near, again like Pokemon GO — except instead of a ding or a buzz, it’s the nearby ghost moaning or muttering vaguely incomprehensible threats from your pocket to let you know you’re about to get attacked if you don’t open your camera quick and defend yourself.
Items/Microtransactions: Film is key — collect it from Dark Rooms and other players or buy some online if you can’t get to enough stops to resupply. You can also buy or collect special charms to ward off ghosts and keep them from assaulting you so much or so readily, like an anti-incense. Or inversely, other charms will attract especially powerful and evil spirits if you want the extra challenge/experience/scare.
Ghostbusters GO
This was one of the most popular answers in the survey I conducted, and while it’s likely to be pretty similar to (a less horrifying version of) Fatal Frame GO, it’s also likely to have a distinct enough flavor to warrant going over the idea again.
IP: Ghostbusters
What you search for: Ghosts to bust. More colorful, less terrifying ones this time.
What you do when you find it: Zap them with your proton pack and try to drag them into the trap at the bottom of the screen. Since a digital ghost on a screen won’t put up any actual physical resistance when you’re dragging it with your finger, maybe you need to quickly swipe back and forth from the ghost to the trap to reel it in.
How progression is measured: Earn seniority in this now-international ghostbusting business by capturing more and more ghosts, then bringing them to gym-like fire station locations to be released into special containment units. As you catch and secure more ghosts and grow in seniority, you gradually earn promotions, which come with access to better equipment: stronger proton packs, larger numbers of traps, etc. Of course, the more intimidating you become as a ghostbuster, the stronger the ghosts you’ll begin to run into.
Social aspect: Meet up with other ghostbusters at fire stations, which in addition to being where you drop off captured ghosts to free up your traps are also where you’ll need to go to recharge your equipment. Come across another buster out in the field and you can give one another a boost by slightly recharging one another’s equipment. Forego these check-ins for too long and you’ll be left with dead batteries and full traps, meaning you’ll have to start running from ghosts rather than busting them.
Style notes: The type of ghosts you encounter depends on the location; find ghosts in historic period costumes near museums and historic buildings, athletic ghosts in gyms and jogging around parks, drowned ghosts next to bodies of water, Slimer around restaurants and eateries, etc. Also, the glowing, wriggling proton streams that drag ghosts into your traps are an obvious FX necessity.
Items/Microtransactions: Each trap can only hold a single ghost, so you need to either empty the ones you’ve got at fire stations or buy more online. You can also use one-use devices like the ones in the new Ghostbusters movie (which was a pretty good movie, deal with it) to amplify nearby paranormal activity, giving you more ghosts to capture. Proton grenades, another one-use device from the new movie (shut up), can be used to instantly defeat and capture lower level spirits. Find these occasionally at fire stations or buy them.
Dark Souls GO
Here’s one that was fun to figure out. These games were always about venturing into the unknown, frequently retreating to small pockets of safety, and engaging in jolly cooperation with other players; if done correctly, this franchise would make a surprisingly obvious GO game.
IP: Dark Souls
What you search for: Explore different urban and rural areas; come across enemies, ambushes, and traps; and look for soul items scattered around the world. Perhaps you’ll find the occasional rare chest with a new weapon or piece of equipment in it.
What you do when you find it: Collect the soul items and other loot, fight the enemies, avoid or disarm the traps, and generally try to survive in a dying world and not get killed on your walk. You start the game with a single estus flask that you can use to recover lost health, though health regeneration from drinking one is on a slow timer, which prevents them from being the lifesaving crutch that most health potions in other games can be.
How progression is measured: Gain souls and humanity from enemies you defeat while wondering around or from soul items that you find and collect. Spend them to boost your stats and/or upgrade your equipment and become more durable, better able to survive your walks and destroy the dangers that assault you.
Social aspect: Bonfires are vitally important public gathering places. Souls can only be spent at bonfires, and if you die away from one, you have to travel back to one to resurrect and keep playing. Your souls are dropped at the GPS coordinates where you died, though; and if someone else gets to them before you do, maybe they can pick them up themselves, in part or in whole, like stray soul items.
Or, if that’s too confrontational for a massive multiplayer AR game, maybe they can take the co-op route and safeguard the bloodstain until its owner returns to retrieve it, like a sort of real-world Blue Sentinel helping out players in distress. Or maybe both options are viable depending on whether you’re a Darkwraith or a Sun Bro.
Spend your humanity at the bonfires you frequent to kindle them, increasing the number of estus flasks that they give to you and, for a limited time, to other undead players who stop by to rest and recuperate.
Style notes: There’s no music at all except for when you get near a bonfire, when a calming melody starts to play to tell you this is a safe place to rest. Instead, expect to just hear the sound effects from the games: that swooshing inhale of collecting new souls, the dull chime of picking up an item, and maybe even the regular heavy bootfalls your character tends to make when walking around (which can be turned off in the settings if that starts to get annoying).
Items/Microtransactions: Bonfire ascetics can be burned to power up the enemies around you, making them harder to fight but more rewarding to defeat, or attracting miniboss-style enemies like various demons, giants, or ruined knights. Human effigies can also be burned for the opposite effect, powering down nearby enemies or temporarily repelling them altogether. Alluring skulls can be used to distract enemies, hostile or otherwise, and allow players to either sneak by ambushes or retreat from battles going poorly. Find these things as you explore the world or sometimes waiting for you at bonfires if you don’t want to buy them.
Zelda GO
IP: Legend of Zelda
What you search for: Monsters and treasure across the land, as well as the odd obstacle.
What you do when you find it: Fight and slay the monsters with all the different equipment at your disposal, from sword and shield to bombs, boomerang, hookshot, and so on. Earn rupees from defeating monsters and finding treasure. Not all treasure is money, though; sometimes it’s health, sometimes it’s items like bombs or jars or rare bugs. Use the right items on different obstacles and events scattered Pokestop-like around the world — like using a bomb on a cracked boulder to get what’s underneath, or using a jar on a rare bug to collect it — and earn greater bonuses (rarer items, more rupees, etc.).
How progression is measured: The easy answer would be to introduce a typical RPG leveling system and tie your attack and defense stats to it. A more interesting option, though, would be to eschew experience points and keep progression tied to the rupee/item economy. You can buy stronger swords, tougher shields, more bombs, etc. with the rupees you collect, or trade in rare items for new equipment, new costumes, new songs to play on your ocarina, different masks that grant you different effects, etc.
Social aspect: This was a bit tricky to figure out at first. There’s only one Hero of Time at a time, after all, and in most Zelda games, there isn’t a whole lot of interaction with other dungeon crawling adventurers either. But we can get around this by going in a sort of Tri Force Heroes route: You pick what color outfit you want to wear on your adventures at the beginning — green, red, or blue — like picking a team in Pokemon GO. Ostensibly, then, your character would be one of many incarnations of the hero overlapping from their own worlds and stories.
For some PvP gameplay, gym-style locations are now dungeons fraught with monsters and traps that require the right load out to get through — kill the monsters, disarm or survive the traps, solve the puzzles, and you can conquer the dungeon, which grants it to your colored team. If the dungeon has already been taken by your team, then instead of trying to conquer it, you can set your own traps and monsters to defend it from other heroes.
Style notes: Combat-wise, swipe your finger in a slash across your enemies to swing your sword at them; fling bombs by flicking them at enemies; throw your boomerang by drawing a loop from it through the enemy and back again; hookshot enemies by tapping on them to draw them in closer; and block by holding your finger on the shield button. I’m also imagining a basic rhythm button pressing game to play the ocarina for puzzle purposes or just for fun.
Items/Microtransactions: Game-changing gear like new masks with useful effects or powerful weapons aren’t for sale online, and neither are the rare items you could trade for them — buy them with rupees or find them on your journey. Rupees also can’t be bought. But what you can buy are more of the helpful disposable items, like bombs and jars and the like, or character customization items like new tunics and hats that don’t affect gameplay in any sense other than cosmetically.
Which idea is your favorite? Which ideas that weren’t covered would also make an awesome AR game? Let me know. And if you know anybody at Niantic, maybe let them know too, wouldja?
