Release date(s) 2015 (never released) Mode Multiplayer video game | Developer Niantic Platforms Android, iOS | |
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Genre(s) Augmented reality role-playing video game | ||
Endgame: Proving Ground was an announced but never released mobile app by Niantic Labs. It is an augmented reality or mixed reality game played anywhere in the world you can get wireless service via cell phone or standard Internet service provider.
Contents
Setting
The story of the alternate reality for Endgame: Proving Ground is the same as Endgame: The Calling. They are both elements in a transmedia storytelling strategy by author James Frey and Nils Johnson-Shelton partnering with Niantic Labs. The story world of Endgame is told via website in an interactive manner, as narrated six days a week by an actress who in 2014 began telling the pre-story to the books by James Frey.
Twelve families were chosen by extraterrestrials long ago. They have been training since then while waiting for the sign of the "endgame", at which point one survivor will need to recover three keys and thus decide humankind's fate.
Elements of Gameplay
Endgame: Proving ground uses the geography of Google Maps in order to mark off points of interest.
Players can walk around outside at these points and collect equipment to increase their ability to defend or attack points of interest, much like a traditional role playing game.
Players can also claim the points and then are free to wander. Fights result after an already claimed point of interest is contested by an opposing player. The player who has the current claim will receive a notification to defend the point and can respond from anywhere in the world as long as they're online. If not online the duel challenge goes to the next player on the team. Should no players be available to defend the claim to the point, an artificial intelligence will duel against the player who is seeking to claim the point as his own.
Prizes
The book was originally to be part of a trilogy, in which each volume would include an interactive puzzle that would lead the first solver of it to a valuable prize: "The puzzle will lead readers to a key, and that key will unlock $500,000 worth of gold on display at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas." The corresponding prizes for the second and third volumes were to be worth $150,000 and $100,000 respectively.