Spectropia Studios’ Upcoming Augmented Reality Game ‘Scrylight’ Sees You Hunting Ghosts Everywhere
Ever wonder if a concept like Pokémon Go could work for horror games? Spectropia Studios certainly thinks so, and they’ve teamed up with Niantic Lightship (who developed the Augmented Reality technology used by Pokémon Go) to develop Scrylight, an AR ghost-hunting game that aims to take things a little further than standard horror games.
Scrylight‘s premise takes us back to 1842, where Spiritualist Jeremiah Scry wrote his book outlining his own methods for allowing the living to view and interact with the dead through the use of forbidden illumination techniques and rituals, all in the hope of recording evidence of life after death. Scry mysteriously vanished, along with his book. Now over 100 years later, a set of Scry’s papers have been recovered, with his ancient light rituals updated to the digital age thanks to the power of Augmented Reality. Scry’s use of illumination techniques used to communicate with entities, modernized into a unique signal, utilized by smart phones.
The object of the game is to banish the ghosts you encounter using three pieces of evidence that you collect, and performing the ritual to banish them. In order to hunt, you’ll first have to use Scrylight‘s GPS system to plan out a “safe and suitable” location to hunt and scan for entities. From there, you’ll collect and compile pages of evidence from the entity, learning about its life and death. To get the evidence, however, you’ll have to gain the entity’s confidence by communicating with it or playing games with it.
Scrylight has been in development for a little over a year, and touts itself as allowing players to hunt for ghosts anywhere, with full interaction with the ‘entities’ thanks to the game’s Scry Engine. It’ll also custom generate entities dependent on your location. For example, if you’re at the beach, you’ll get pirates. Or if you’re in the woods, witches. For added fun, the game will have smart device integration, allowing for real world hauntings. Meaning, the ghosts will trigger actual smart devices. You’ll also be able to have up to 4 player simultaneous play.
Currently, Spectropia are having a Kickstarter for Scrylight to raise funds for further development. You can find out more information regarding the game and the developer’s plans from there. You can also visit the game’s official site.