A development team based at the University of British Columbia have designed a free, team-based and virtual survival game for four different locations in Kelowna.
Apocalypse Made Easy! (AME!) encourages friends and families to get outside, get active and learn how to survive in a dystopian Kelowna.
“We only get through real disasters if we stick together. We designed the game around this idea. Team members need to collaborate to succeed,” said the game’s producer Andrew Munroe. “It’s the same in the ‘real world’— and we hope that players will continue to share and collaborate long after the game ends.”
Each team requires two to five people. Once the team is logged in, the players will choose a scenario.
The game includes four place-based scenarios in both Vancouver and Kelowna, each focused on a different element of resilience and survival. They are earthquake or wildfire preparation; finding and filtering water in the wild or in an urban environment; living off the land, and collaborating.
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Once chosen, an AI bot named BORIS will assign roles based on the personality traits of each participant. They can be named the Wayfinder, scientician, doomsayer, interpreter or the burdened.
The game will last 45 to 120 minutes, depending on how fast the team can make it through and it will run through a web browser, using five megabytes of data, according to the team at AME!.
“I’ve been drawn to post-apocalyptic games and I’ve always wondered how my friends and I would fare,” said Munroe about the inspiration for the game.
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AME! was designed in partnership with UBC as part of the Social Innovators Challenge project, funded by the Movember Foundation.
It was released and June and will run until the project is complete in September.
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