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Treasure World
Augmented reality may become a buzzword, though probably a under utilized type of technology, thanks to the upcoming 3DS. An interesting application of it in the gaming world already exists in Treasure World.
Star Sweep and his SIR-like companion, Wishfinder, have crashed on the Earth and it is up to you to gather enough fuel to set them back on their merry way. In Treasure World this is accomplished by cleaning stars, that is, using your DS to pick up unique WiFi signals. You are rewarded for your efforts with a variety of decorations for your tiny game world and a variety of outfits/makeup/poses ect. for Wishfinder.
The game play in Treasure World consists of four things; walking or driving (some might even say wardriving) around to pick up WiFi signals, dressing the Wishfinder up in ridiculous and gaudy apparel, using your collected knickknacks to compose music, and, should you be so brave, interacting with the Treasure World website to trade items and engage in other social gaming activities.
There’s something wonderful about the core mechanic of Treasure World. Part of the game is getting out of your stifling bedroom and exploring the actual world. This is where the allusion to augmented reality comes in. WiFi signals, which are not normally perceptible and which, unless you feel like cracking some WEP passwords, aren’t of any practical value to you are converted into something useful (I’m using the term loosely). It serves as a reminder that the world is filled with a great deal more information than we tend to be consciously aware of and an exponentially greater amount than our senses can deliver us. It’s also a curious reminder that information is inert without interpretation: under most contexts WiFi handshake signals are only of value to their routers user, but they float in ether all around us and Treasure World turns them into goodies. It’s a bit like an application that converts .jpegs into sound files except its source material doesn’t have any initial value. Perhaps a better analogy would be to compare it to a radio receiver. It’s also a handy, if inexact, tool to measure WiFi density for those with a sociological interest. Through this application it demonstrates how readily humans change the world they inhabit, both visibly and invisibly.
Treasure World has some gaming value, but really only in the collecting nature of something like Farmville. There’s not really any challenge to it. While WiFi signals are abundant, after two months of exploring Honolulu (which is densely populated) my source of new signals is starting to run a bit dry and I’ve only collected a small percentage of the stuff in the game. It is certainly not recommended for rural inhabitants. I found dressing up the Wishfinder to be a lot more entertaining than it has any right to be. There are well over a hundred outfits ranging from the classic luchador to the copyright infringing Rainbow Bright ensemble. There are also a great deal of goofy eyes, mouths and modes of movement which can be applied to the Wishfinder which helps to better mirror the absurdity of using a DS to catalog WiFi signals in order to unlock goofy eyes, mouths and modes of movement for a digital simulation of a pet robot.
Once you tire of playing dress up with the Wishfinder, Treasure World also provides music sequencing game play. The sequencer is surprisingly complex and, well, good. You’re limited to one octave and you can’t stack samples on the same note, but you’re given a wealth of samples covering different ranges and instruments that is adequate to make up for this. Patterns are limited to roughly eight bars, but can be chained together if you’re willing to dig through the menus. You’re given a range of tempos from very slow to gabbaish 200bpm rates. Basically, you can make some really good songs with Treasure World if you can unlock enough samples to give yourself an adequate sound palette to work with. Unfortunately sounds are usually organized by their accompanying icon (plants, statues, that sort of thing) rather than what they sound like which can making searching for the right sample a bit of a chore. Additional preset songs can also be unlocked by completing collections of items.
Treasure World is an interesting gimmick. I found myself thinking about it a lot more than I did actually playing it. It’s the kind of weird novelty that seems to have disappeared from the world with the collapse of Sega’s home console hardware division. It’s also a serviceable musical tool. It may not be much of a game, but it is one of the neater pieces of software on the DS and it may be a interesting portent of what gaming devices are capable of as they become more aware of their surroundings, be it through motion sensors, cameras or telcom features.
