Limbic Software is working with Google to bring a brand-new version of their highly popular mobile game Zombie Gunship to the Android developer’s new motion/space sensing hardware.
At first glance Zombie Gunship Reality seems to be a perfect storm of game industry fads. Motion controls? Zombies? Augmented reality elements? How can it go wrong? Yet, under its kitschy exterior lies a project that sets out to show users just what Google’s new Project Tango hardware can do for gamers.
The plot of the game is simple and intimately familiar to almost any gamer — player shoots zombies, player saves civilians. What makes the Zombie Gunship series unique is right there in its title: rather than being a survivor with limited ammunition engaged in ground-based skirmishes with the undead, you are instead the gunner/pilot of an advanced aircraft armed to the hilt with multiple kinds of firepower, all in the name of squashing the undead and saving the lives of all those squishies unfortunate enough not to be in possession of airborne death machines. The games are quite popular on both the Android and iOS marketplaces, and come in both 3D rendered and “retro” versions.
With Zombie Gunship Reality, Limbic Software has access to a whole new toolbox to work with in regards to controls. For those not familiar with Google’s Project Tango hardware, the idea is to create Android-based hardware capable of a virtual 1:1 tracking of movement as well as advanced 3D mapping and location tracking. If the hardware does what it intends to, it will introduce a whole new level of camera- and motion-based interaction to the realm of mobile hardware, with the gaming applications being only one small part of the hardware’s eventual capabilities. The video below helps to show some of what Limbic Software hopes to achieve using the hardware in Zombie Gunship Reality:
Like with the Project Tango hardware itself, Zombie Gunship Reality is still in somewhat early days. The game is expected to launch some time this fall for those who are lucky enough to get in on the ground floor with consumer-grade Project Tango hardware, and is only the first of hopefully many games we’ll see stretching into the future that will work with Google’s new hardware to bring interactive, motion-based gaming out of the realm of gimmick and into the world of a truly integral gameplay element.