Niantic, maker of the two hit games (and their predecessor Ingress), has announced that its next title is a similar massively-multiplayer augmented reality take on the classic board game Catan. Like Pokémon Go and Wizards Unite you’ll have to grab your phone and head out into the world to play, with real-life landmarks and monuments converted into the tiles of a global game board. Since it’s Catan you’ll have to collect brick, lumber, grain, ore and wool to trade with other players, and collect development cards to build and upgrade settlements and cities. There’ll also be some sort of team gameplay too, driven by collecting Victory Points through constructing roads and settlements, with the chance to rank at both local and global levels and earn seasonal rewards.
The game’s website is live now, and you can pre-register to play the game at launch. There’s no word yet on when that will be, but it will apparently make its beta debut “very soon.” Catan: World Explorers is one of more than ten projects that Niantic is working on, and today it also announced that it is collaborating with interactive theatre pioneers Punchdrunk – behind the likes of Sleep No More and The Drowned Man – on some of those projects, which will “reinvent storytelling for a 21st-century audience and further expand the horizon of interactive entertainment.” As for Niantic’s biggest game, Pokémon Go is still going strong. Not only is it possible to play the game from home during lockdown, but the annual Pokémon Go Fest is still going ahead at the end of July. Tech Advisor’s Deputy Editor, Dom covers everything that runs on electricity, from phones and laptops to wearables, audio, gaming, smart home, and streaming - plus he’s a regular fixture on the Tech Advisor YouTube channel.
