PAX Australia was the home of an interesting debut. Buy Somewhere, a new location-based mobile game, was showcased along with a live action trailer presentation. The gameplay looks like a mix between Monopoly and (of course) Pokémon GO. If you’re tired of collecting little monsters, then you might want to pay some attention to this, as Buy Somewhere deals with more substantial things. Real Estate, to be exact.
In the game, you will be trying to ‘buy’ real houses, office buildings, stadiums and famous landmarks that you happen to pass by (or ran straight to). It appears that the system behind Buy Somewhere is smart enough to identify real locations and also set an appropriate virtual market price for each one. The game is not only about collecting. Owned properties can be rented to produce money which allows you to acquire more real estate. Players can also steal properties from others. That might happen at one time or another, but in the game there’s also Mr. Nowhere, a virtual competitor that cares for nothing else than to see you bankrupted. So being the only player in an area will not be devoid of challenges. Luckily, the virtual assistant, Mr. Somewhere is there to guide you in buying smart any of the 60 types of properties.
Nick Griffiths, founder and lead game designer commented on their creation:
“We’ve been in development for a long time. There’s still a long way to go, but we’re incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished. To us, games that have been released thus-far in this space didn’t fully realise the potential uses of location data. Today we’ve lifted the veil on what our vision of this has transformed into.”
So it appears that even though Pokémon GO made a big splash when it came out, in fact it only broke the ice of location based gaming. Buy Somewhere might just be the next rage. In any case, it is now in early access beta, so you can try it out for yourselves.
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