With the proliferation of camera-equipped smartphones that also double as mobile gaming systems in the last few years, the amount of augmented reality apps and games has surged. While there are a ton of ingenious non-gaming ways to use AR on your smartphone, the vast majority of the games that used the technology boiled down to slapping some graphical assets onto your device's camera view and calling it a game, with little regard for how the augmented reality portion actually affected or enhanced the gameplay.

One title that bucked that trend and changed how I feel about most AR games was last year's ARDefender [99¢] from French developer Int 13. ARDefender had you printing out a special diagram from the ARDefender website (or as we've come to find, just displaying the diagram on a separate device or computer screen) which would then be read by the game using the camera on your iPhone or iPod touch. The game would create a tower on top of this diagram, making it appear that it was actually there in the space where your camera was pointed. Then enemies would come after this tower in waves, and you'd use an assortment of weaponry affixed to the top of your tower to fend them off.

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Augmented-reality games are weird. They hardly work and even when they actually do operate as intended, the game experience is usually lacking and centralizes entirely too much around the whole augmenting gimmick. I’m also not too sure if there’s even a market out there for these kinds of games. But, I probably shouldn’t be so dismissive, especially when there’s a new, apparently solid-looking SDK out in there in the wild.

According to TechCrunch, Qualcomm has released its ARG SDK, which was originally intended for Android devices with Snapdragon chips, for iOS-compatible devices. This initial release has support for, specifically, the iPhone 4, iPad 2, and even the fourth-generation iPod Touch.

If you’re in the dark on augmented reality, it’s a pretty simple concept. You point your device’s camera at something real and then the game turns that into something interactive. A lot of card games, for example, like to incentivize their physical, branded cards by allowing you to scan them into their respective games and then use digital versions of them. Other games just incorporate real-world settings on top of existing mechanics, like this Star Wars game here:

Having an SDK at hand that actually works with a target platform organically should really empower those studios out there who have good augmented reality ideas, but don’t want to spend the research and development costs of getting the core technology that makes the "augmenting" work. This is a good thing for all of us because, hey, who knows? Maybe we will get that game that completely changes my jaded perspective on augmented reality games in general. (I hope so.)

[Via TechCrunch]

Straight up: you’ll have to forgive me if some of the nuance of Shadow Cities [Free] -- one of the newest geo-centric MMO games available on the App Store -- has evaded me. It’s not good at telling you what it is and how you’re supposed to interact with it. Although, a lot of that might have to do with the fact that I don't exactly live in a dense metropolitan area, rendering the location awareness of the game moot since there's no one around me playing.

The PR isn’t much better, though the press releases and the buzz around it are the things that drew our attention in the first place. Shadow Cities is billed as a PVP-centric ARG that uses wherever you are as the game’s map. Like an MMO, it supposedly offers a cool and deep leveling system and a ton of missions and ‘activities.’

That's real high-concept stuff. What I actually see is a weird, blacked-out Google Maps-style world with little purple, blue, red, and green orbs floating around like neon snowflakes. With a couple of flicks of my wrists, my orange orb can decimate these other colored orbs. Then, I get experience points and, I guess, the implied promise of further orb decimation.

It seems like the point of the game revolves around killing these orbs. With each victory, I come closer to dominating my urban center, which happens to be a small city deep in the American south. I don’t see any progress bars or anything of that sort, though, so I’ll just assume that the forthcoming tyranny will take some time to seed.

In Shadow Cities, you play as a mage of one of two sides. I picked the “tech priest”-type of dudes assuming that the meld of man, psychic powers, and machines would fair better against the earthy, organic types of mages. I don’t think there’s a substantial difference in what “team” you pick. At least, I don’t get that impression.

There are two chat rooms available to you once you start the game. It isn’t, at least here, specific to your urban center. The guys talking in the chat are from my state in general and they’re looking for people to battle because app hasn’t reached the kind of critical and consumer response that it needs to flourish and become more than a proof of concept that sounds neat in press releases.

Over on the game’s official blog, proof of stuff that can happen in the game can be found. Earlier in May, users were encouraged to join battle groups, which are, essentially, global communities of 100 mages assigned to a country. There was a campaign in which one team won over another by keeping large cities to themselves, while destroying the other team’s big cities. That sounds pretty cool, actually.

I’d like to get a sense of that scale, but through the app, I can’t. I just see city streets and AI-controlled wisps of color that dance around my orange wisp. I destroy these wisps and then more generate and then I destroy them. If I could see where my battle is going, how my individual fights are factoring into a larger picture, or if I actually felt like I was interacting with a larger world, Shadow Cities would click better with me.

There's a lot of promise here. I mean, think about it. Just by whipping out your phone and spending the 15 seconds it takes to crush an orb, you could be helping to decide the fate of a global battle. That's heavy, man, and fun-sounding idea to boot. Or, additionally, if you live in a dense area, this could be like Yelp!, except with mage battles. You walk into a store some jerk checked-in to and then BOOM -- you take him out.

I should note that the studio behind Shadow Cities, Grey Area, is behind the project and willing to keep iterating on top of the existing software. Gamasutra caught up with its CEO recently and he said as much, adding some specifics on new mechanics being added in the future:

"We want to develop it further and enable people to interact in the way that they want," he said, "we’ve been really conscious and paying attention how people want to create the battles... that’s what people want to do: strategize, plan, raid locations together, and all of that, so it’s definitely in the works, if you will.”

Cool. Come next update, I hope someone, anyone, around here picks up the game so I can put a spell all over his face.

Piclings [99¢] from Pan Vision Games is one of the most interesting uses of augmented reality in gaming that I’ve seen. It’s a simple platforming game that can take any picture and turn it into a playable level filled with coins, items, and enemies. The tech works surprisingly well, and it’s undeniably fun to think of new and silly pictures to create levels from. Unfortunately, the underlying gameplay mechanics aren’t the greatest, though they’re serviceable. Despite this, Piclings is still a unique enough experience that’s worth checking out.

The game includes 7 levels to play including a tutorial which walks you through the basic controls. A touch anywhere directional stick moves you character left and right, and you can float like a helicopter in the air for a limited time by pushing up. The floating mechanic is pretty awkward to use, and I would have much preferred the ability to just do a standard jump. Tapping anywhere on the screen will drop the Picling through the surface he’s currently standing on and down to the next.

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Remember when we took a look at the Parrot AR.Drone last September? It seems like ages ago with how fast the App Store moves. Anyway, one of the things Parrot was pushing hardcore for the AR.Drone device was a yet-to-be-released two player augmented reality game where players would be able to engage in real-time augmented reality dogfights utilizing two iPhones and two AR.Drones. (Making it one of the most expensive two player games on the App Store.)

Details are vague right now, but Parrot is openly announcing the release date of AR.FLYINGACE as April 15th. In addition, they've also released the following teaser trailer of the game in action:

With third party app support for the AR.Drone being somewhat predictably lackluster, it's great to see Parrot finally releasing some games for the device. I'm not entirely sure that AR.FLYINGACE makes the AR.Drone any more compelling of a purchase since it requires having a buddy who also has an AR.Drone, but assuming you're in that kind of situation now, you've got something awesome to look forward to next week.

Kotaku is reporting that after the end of March, the augmented reality shooter Star Wars Arcade: Falcon Gunner [$2.99] will be pulled from the App Store. We took a look at this title when it was announced in early November, with its release coming just a couple of weeks later. The game allows you to point the camera of your iOS device towards anything to serve as the backdrop for an intense shootout with Imperial ships as you man the gunner turret on the Millennium Falcon.

The game is published by THQ Wireless, but was developed by a small studio called Vertigore. Josh Shabtai, Falcon Gunner’s creative director and head of Vertigore, recently wrote in a blog post that due to THQ’s deal with the owners of everything Star Wars Lucasfilm coming to an end, THQ will not be able to allow Star Wars: Falcon Gunner to be sold in the App Store any longer.

This is bad news for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that Star Wars: Falcon Gunner is pretty cool. But it also means that current owners will never be able to receive possibly critical updates to the game, and that current development plans for Falcon Gunner will never materialize. These included a new Battle for Endor expansion and a special iPad 2 edition, both of which won’t see the light of day now. Josh also hints that it could very well be the end for any THQ published Star Wars titles in the App Store, though he can only confirm that to be true for his own game.

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Orbotix is an unconventional developer with a project we posted about a while ago. Its mission is to bring smartphone controlled, open devices to market. The first of these is Sphero, a robotic ball that responds to inputs from an iPhone or iPod Touch via Bluetooth and an device-specific app.

It’ll be about six months before Sphero is ready for store shelves, but the lack of polish didn’t stop Orbotix from taking their balls on the road to CES in Las Vegas where, of course, Mac Rumors got their hands on them.

The demonstration, which took place in a mini-arena of sorts, yielded some neat pieces of intel about Sphero. Most relevant to us is the fact that Orbotix wants to release the API to App Store creators, allowing anyone with the knowhow to sculpt games around the device.

At the event, Orbotix suggested soccer or bowling games could be made, which yeah, I totally could see that happening if the device took off. But will it take off? I don’t know. I lost my fortuneteller license in a fire. But I do know that people like crazy little devices that can move around.

Orbotix hopes to launch Sphero in “late 2011” for under one hundred bones -- and hopefully well under $100 if it hopes that more than 12 people will take a look at it.

[via Mac Rumors]

I don't have a Parrot AR.Drone like Eli "Hollywood" Hodapp does, but I wish I did. He seemed to connect with the device on a deep, fundamental level and love bloomed as the two grew closer together during their private review sessions. But with all man-toys, that fondness and that spark can fade as familiarity sets in. Ah, if only there was a two-player game that supported the Parrot AR. Drone. That would make Eli and the masses love again…

Oh, hey, how convenient; there will be such a thing! Parrot is telling us that a new AR game is on the way, and it's one that seeks to test players' flying mettle both in and outside of an App. Crazy!

AR. Pursuit as this title is called, is a "two-player pursuit game" that will have a duo of AR.Drone-equipped people shooting it out in a digital space while flying their Drones in the real, McDonald's-infested world we live in.

Here's how it works: the game uses the Drone's front-facing cameras and renders in bullets and missiles when players choose to fire. To avoid game-death, players will need to maneuver their drones in various directions, making the real world a game board as opposed to a grim place of death and fast food.

The game, which hits November 26 at $2.99, can be played indoors and out provided a stable Wi-Fi connection can be accessed. Parrot recommends that you use those indoor stickers if you plan to play indoors, and obviously you'll want to pick a place that's large enough to move an RC craft around in.

The future! Let's get with the Bacta tanks already, please. My knee hurts and I don't want to go to a doctor. Thanks.

Developer THQ Wireless is flexing their Star Wars license once again with the announcement of Star Wars Arcade: Falcon Gunner. THQ has brought a number of Star Wars licensed games to the App Store, including Star Wars: Battle for Hoth [$2.99/Lite] and Star Wars: Trench Run [$2.99]. This newly announced Falcon Gunner game takes a slightly different approach, unsurprisingly placing you in the gunner's seat on the Millenium Falcon and having you blast away at enemies in an augmented reality style overlay.

We've seen these kinds of games before, but admittedly Star Wars: Falcon Gunner looks to be a fairly high quality effort with a nicely modeled gunner interior and the wonderful authentic Star Wars music and sound effects that I'm such a sucker for. You'll be able to point your device's camera at anything and watch the onslaught of TIE Fighters and other enemies come gunning for you, which leaves open the possibility for some humorous dogfighting locations (“Imperial TIE Fighter heading straight at us from the litter box sir!”).

Of course if you aren't in an area that features an appropriate battle environment, Star Wars: Falcon Gunner will come equipped with some pre-rendered backgrounds where you can play as well. This video shows Falcon Gunner being played with New York City as a backdrop:

Not many other details are known about Star Wars: Falcon Gunner at this time, though THQ is shooting for a mid-November release. Though the game won't necessarily need to use the camera since it has the option of built in backgrounds, it looks like it will only be compatible with the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and 4th generation iPod touch which are all camera equipped. We'll have more from Star Wars: Falcon Gunner as it gets closer to release later this month, and you can drop by the upcoming games thread in our forums for some discussion on the game.

Just two days after we took a hands-on look at ARDefender from developer Int13, the game has now become available in the App Store as of this morning. What is a nice surprise is that the game has launched for just 99¢. In ARDefender, you'll print out a special PDF image from ARDefender.com that is read by the software and creates a 3D tower in the real-life space of the iOS device camera's view. Enemies then attack the tower from all angles, and you fend them off with a weapon placed on top of the tower. You'll have a machine gun, rockets, and a laser at your disposal as you take on the endless waves of increasingly difficult enemies.

It's a cool concept and one that works really well in practice. I was blown away with how convincingly the tower seems to actually exist in the area where you're playing the game. The gameplay itself is also quite fun, although pretty bare bones. There's really only one mode to play through in ARDefender which has you defending against seemingly endless waves of enemies. Beyond that, there's not a whole lot more to the game. I'd love to see something along the lines of a story mode, different styles of towers, or online leaderboards and achievements. Still, what's here in terms of gameplay is pretty darn fun anyway. This video shows off one round of ARDefender as well as me playing around a little with how the technology works:

One thing that is important to take note of is that ARDefender will not work with the original iPhone or iPhone 3G. It would make sense that the older iPod touches would not run the game as they don't have an external camera (the game does run on the new camera-enabled 4th generation iPod touches by the way), but apparently ARDefender requires some processing power that needs at least a 3Gs iPhone or above.

Normally when a game only has one mode to play with not a lot of bells and whistles, it can be hard to recommend as those games tend to get old pretty quickly. In ARDefender's case however, the technology is just so impressive and the gameplay is so well done that it's hard to pass on the game when it's only a dollar. It's definitely something you'll want to show off to your friends because it's so neat, and players in our forums are already finding all of the wacky places they can place the PDF image and play the game (including pulling up the image on a second Apple device and growing the tower right out of that device's screen). If you have a dollar to spare and a capable device, you should definitely give ARDefender a try.

This past Friday we took a look at the upcoming Augmented Reality game ARDefender from developer Int13. What sets ARDefender apart from other Augmented Reality games is its use of a special printed image that is placed in the camera's view and is recognized by the software to create a 3D model of a tower inside the game. Int13 was nice enough to promptly send over a preview copy of ARDefender so that we could try it out for ourselves, and after spending some time playing with the game over the weekend, my feelings are largely positive. The game works just as well as was demonstrated in the video from our preview, and beyond being a really interesting piece of technology, ARDefender offers up a pretty fun gameplay experience as well.

The first thing you'll need to do before playing ARDefender is print out the PDF image from their website that creates the tower in the game. After printing and cutting out the square image, you'll place it down on a flat surface where you intend to play. Loading up the game and hitting the play button will bring up the view from the device's camera, and once it recognizes the PDF image it will instantly create a little tower out of thin air.

Gameplay involves using the weapon mounted on top of the tower to fend off waves of enemies as they attack. Touching anywhere on the screen places an aiming reticule at that spot and holding down a button in the lower right corner fires your weapon. There's a regular cannon with unlimited ammunition, and limited missile or laser attacks at your disposal. Occasionally an airplane will drop off a crate full of ammunition for you to collect. The tower has a health gauge in the upper corner and the goal is to keep the tower alive for the duration of each round, which seems to always be 60 seconds. More difficult enemies appear with each round, and if your health gauge runs out the tower crumbles and it's game over.

The first portion of this video shows one round of gameplay in ARDefender, with a few toys I laid out next to the tower just for fun. Then I tried to pan around the tower to give a closer look at the 3D model it consists of. Finally, I printed out the PDF image at four times the size of what the default is, to see if it would give me a larger tower in the game, which it indeed does. It doesn't seem that the game will recognize both towers at once though, but I did find that I preferred playing with the larger tower rather than the smaller one. This will also depend on how far away you plan on being from the surface where the tower is set.

Overall I really liked what I've played of ARDefender so far, despite its fairly simplistic game mechanics. It's hard not to be impressed with how convincingly the tower is created in the real life space where you play the game, in my case a coffee table and kitchen floor. It's worth noting that the game had trouble creating a tower when I tried playing on an uneven surface like carpet, so it seems to require a smooth flat surface for best performance. Also, it's a really bare-bones package. There's no sort of cohesive campaign or storyline to play through, or any type of persistent stats or score tracking. This can easily be rectified with an update down the line, however, and I'd personally love to see some additional downloadable images that give you different styles of towers to play with.

Despite any shortcomings, the game still manages to be pretty fun. ARDefender has already been submitted to the App Store, and we'll take a closer look at the game when it becomes available, hopefully sometime in the next couple of weeks.

It was just about this time last year that Apple introduced the 3.1 firmware update to the iPhone that allowed developers to access the built-in camera for games and apps. What followed was an avalanche of “Augmented Reality” games, or in other words games that utilized real-time images from the iPhone camera and added digital graphical effects over those images to create gameplay out of the environments in front of you. Unfortunately, nothing too spectacular ever emerged from this technology, and most games consisted of shallow gameplay with Space Invaders-type graphics slapped over the camera's view. There have been some interesting uses of Augmented Reality on the iPhone just to be clear, but as far as gaming was concerned it never amounted to more than just a gimmick.

Now it seems that developer Int13 is trying something a bit different to bring a more authentic Augmented Reality experience to the iPhone (and camera-enabled iPod touches) with their upcoming game ARDefender. The way ARDefender works is that you'll print out an image from a PDF file available on their website, and this special image will be read by the camera and create a tower where the image is placed. The goal of the game is to defend that tower from waves of enemies by moving your device around the fixed position of the tower to take aim and blast away at them. It may sound a little simplistic gameplay-wise, but what I really like is how convincingly the tower and enemies seem to actually be on the table, which can be seen in the video below.

We previewed a technology very similar to that used in ARDefender way back in March of last year at GDC, but at that time use of the iPhone camera APIs was off limits to developers. The technology has also been used in the Playstation 3 game Eye of Judgment, and even in this incredible Augmented Reality tattoo. Ideas like this are obviously possible on the iPhone as well, and it seems like ARDefender is a step in the right direction. All I've ever really wanted from an Augmented Reality game is for it to make me actually feel like something is being created in the real life space around me, and by the looks of things ARDefender does just that.

It shouldn't be too long before we can get our hands on the game either, as ARDefender has already been submitted to Apple. Interestingly, the game has been available for over a month on the Samsung Wave, and impressions from those gamers have been positive. They've even come up with some clever ideas on how to use the technology, like printing out a huge version of the PDF image to create a gigantic tower and playing the game from an elevated area like a balcony, or pulling up the PDF on their computer at work and pointing their phone at it to play the game directly on the screen. We'll be sure to take a closer look at ARDefender when it gets released in the near future.

We got word this afternoon that the Parrot AR.Drone Quadricopter is going to be sold exclusively through Brookstone and is available for pre-order right now for $299.99. Brookstone plans on shipping orders on September 3rd, and the first 300 orders get a free flight bag. (Tempting, I know.) Currently, Brookstone is only willing to ship the Parrot AR.Drone to customers inside of the USA, and optionally available is a $49.95 bundle which includes a additional hull, battery, and an iPhone 3G/3GS case. They're also selling two and three year service plans for $39.99 or $49.99, although it's unclear whether or not breaking your AR.Drone by crashing it in to something is considered "normal wear and tear."

We got our first hands-on at CES 2010 earlier this year and thought it was incredibly cool-

The device is currently controlled using an iPhone/iPod Touch app which communicates through Wi-Fi to the AR.Drone itself. Simply tap on Launch and the AR.Drone takes off and hovers over a stationary spot. On screen controls are easy and effective.

Left/right buttons allow you to rotate 360 degrees in one spot, while up/down buttons control altitude. Pressing on a special button activates tilt-control on the iPhone/iPod Touch itself. This allow you to fly the device by naturally tilting the iPhone itself. Meanwhile, the on screen controls are overlayed with live video coming from the front-facing camera of the Drone itself.

In picking it up for the first time, I found it very easy to maneuver. The main thing I had to get used to was using the drone's point of view to steer, rather than my own. Check out our video:

The Parrot AR.Drone has some serious technology built in to it with its ability to auto-level itself, and pilot itself if it loses the connection with the device you're controlling it with. Remote control helicopters (which require much more skill to fly) sell for upwards of $1,000, making the $299.99 they're asking for everything the AR.Drone is capable of doing seem surprisingly appealing. For more information on the Parrot AR.Drone check out the web site and make sure to take a peek at their gallery of augmented reality games that you can play for the device.

I can't wait to get my hands on one.

Aside from the Parrot AR.Drone quadricopter, we haven't come across much noteworthy in the world of iPhone gaming at CES-- Everyone is far too busy looking at tablet computers being shown and speculating as to which is likely going to be the closest to Apple's tablet. That doesn't mean people at CES aren't playing iPhone games.

The developers behind Gunman [App Store], a camera-based shooter game, are currently running a contest encouraging people to get involved in Gunman battles at CES-- And if the Twitter activity is any indication, quite a few people are. While this contest is largely irrelevant to those of us who aren't at CES, one great thing came out of it: Gunman is free for the duration of the convention.

Gunman makes use of the iPhone's camera to create a real-world multiplayer game similar to laser tag. By connecting to a WiFi network, players join a game then "shoot" each other by taking photos using the phone's camera. If you're running the latest iPhone OS, you can even zoom in as if you were using a sniper scope. Each player is tracked by the color of their shirt, and in my testing of the game I found the color recognition to be shockingly good.

The game comes with a few caveats of course. Large multiplayer games require WiFi, everyone must be wearing a different color shirt, and needless to say, until an iPod touch with a camera materializes you need an iPhone to play. Still, if you can round up a few friends all willing to wear different colored shirts that have iPhones in an area blanketed by WiFi, and don't mind people wondering what in the world you're doing running around pretending to shoot people with your phone, Gunman looks to be a lot of fun.

App Store Link: Gunman, Free (For a limited time.)

While we won't be on the floor of CES until tomorrow, the internet is already on fire with buzz surrounding the Parrot AR.Drone remote control quadricopter that is controlled by creating its own WiFi network that either an iPhone or an iPod Touch connects to. The Parrot AR.Drone is then maneuvered using the accelerometers of the iPhone combined with a video feed from the forward facing camera on the drone itself.

A smart piloting system intelligently compensates for wind and other environmental conditions, and utilizing a second camera which faces the ground can perform a flawless stationary flight on its own. If at any point you take your fingers off the iPhone autopilot engages stabilizing the drone, and if you quit the controller app or lose your connection to the Parrot AR.Drone's WiFi network the drone will stabilize itself and land all on its own.

As seen in the following video, the Parrot AR.Drone has two different hulls-- A fully enclosed hull that protects the rotors from bumping in to walls and furniture indoors, and a hull for outdoors that sacrifices rotor protection for better maneuverability.

As if being able to fly around a drone using nothing more than your iPhone wasn't cool enough, an additional video on the Parrot AR.Drone web site demonstrates some augmented reality games you can play with the Parrot AR.Drone complete with picture in picture showing what the video feed and in-game HUD looks like. It apparently can even recognize shapes in 3D space to overlay different 3D models, such as the boss fight seen at the end of this video:

On top of all this, Parrot even has a developer zone featuring whitepapers that detail how to develop third party games that use the Parrot AR.Drone via an open API. All of these resources are available for free, and while the games shown in the above video were cool, I can't even imagine the potential if third party development support takes off.

Needless to say, we'll be keeping a close eye on the Parrot AR.Drone, and will post more information as it becomes available.