Designing an Augmented Reality Game: Overbeast

For London Design Festival, the city has been overlaid with a mysterious virtual forest; the habitat of enormous beasts that battle for dominance in spectacular augmented reality. Players work together to plant and nurture the forest, feed their beast, and watch the enormous creatures battle over the London skyline. Overbeast makes ground-breaking use of AR technology to create a unique experience that points the way to the future of immersive gaming. Underlying Overbeast’s spectacle and rivalry lies an ethos of shared care and responsibility for the environment. Everything in the Overworld is connected, from tiny mites, to trees to mighty Overbeasts - success in the game relies on understanding how to work together to nurture an ecosystem. The message is carried by techno-mythology inspired UI design, mysterious and majestic overbeasts, the fragile beauty of the forest and an immersive soundscape featuring real Japanese taiko and live instruments inspired by the natural world. In this session, you'll have an opportunity to gain insight into the process of imagining and developing a next-generation AR experience, where the whole city is transformed into an interactive game world. Attendees will have a chance to try the game and plant a virtual forest together, before watching a battle over the London skyline.