Hello and welcome to Ahead of the Game, a series where we tell you all about an upcoming game that, despite not being out yet, is available for you to play at the time of publishing. Through this series, you can grab a chance to play games well ahead of their release date, be that through Soft Launch, Open Beta, Demos, or more.
If you’ve ever wanted to shoot up some alien rabbits outside The Big Tesco, or your local equivilent, or get lost in a maze within a car park then give Landing Party a quick downloaded. It’s a proof of concept all bundled up as a downloadable demo for the next big thing from the founder of Turbine – the company which created a handful of sucessful MMOs before being acquired by Warner Bros back a little under 15 years ago.
Landing Party uses AR technology to layer a gameworld (surely, to augment reality?) over ours. In this case it’s a science fiction world, one where somebody has been up to some mischief and has granted both sentience and special powers to the local fauna… that’s problematic because they don’t especially appreciate the presence of yourself or your colony.
Worse yet, while sentient they might not be the sharpest tools in the shed. Other factions are at play, fighting over control of the creatures and, subsequently, the planet.
Landing Party feels responsive already, and while we’re probably going to see the visuals and scenarios worked on – possibly seeing the current selection of twelve sample levels changed into a campaign complete with story – it’s already very playable, even in this demo form.
As a tech demo, Landing Party is really promising, and I’m excited to see if they can grow it into a larger product. Most of their interviews and briefings so far have expanding on how they want to bring more complex scenarios – as we saw in MMOs and RPGs – into AR, taking it beyond ‘Collecting Stuff’, and I’m keen to see if they manage.
You can download Landing Party on both Google Play and the AppStore using the links below.
