Ploppy
Small creatures that live at real places. You walk there, find them through the camera, and help with their puzzles. Built for the Lightship VPS Challenge.
Reconstructed from the archive and the demo video. Bill's own account is still to come.
The Curiosity
Could a city block feel like it had residents? Not markers on a map, but small characters with moods and errands that you can only meet by going there.
The Build
Ploppy Escape is an AR puzzle game anchored to real places near the San Francisco Exploratorium, built with Niantic Lightship's Visual Positioning System for the VPS Challenge. A map view shows where the Ploppies are; walk close enough and the camera view takes over, with the creature standing on the real fountain or the real steps. Each one has an objective, a hint system and a puzzle. Three characters made it in: a cloud, a sun with a solar panel, and a small planet with trees.
The Result
A working build, a challenge entry and a full set of store screenshots. One of the more ambitious pieces of the XR years.
What We Learned
Location-based play is unforgiving: every place has to be walked, tested and walked again. The creatures were the easy part.
An AR physics puzzle in your own backyard. Set the force, pick a planet's gravity, and bounce the ball into the crate exactly the right number of times.
A guided walk through London that tells you the history of where you are standing.
You are Pac-Man, in mixed reality, on a real basketball court. You run with your feet. The ghosts get faster as you level up.