Pokemon GO is probably the first thing that comes to mind when most people hear “AR mobile game,” but new studio Liquid City is hoping to change that with their debut title Overbeast. Overbeast admittedly looks a lot like Pokemon GO or even Peridots on the surface. It uses an AR overlay to show you fantastic creatures (the Overbeasts) in your area,and your goal is training them and eventually battling other Overbeasts that other players have trained.
How you raise them is where Overbeast aims to set itself apart, and GLHF spoke with Keiichi Matsuda, Liquid City’s director, about those aims and what his goals are for the mobile game.
You won’t find Overbeasts around every corner or wandering around your neighbor’s yard. They’re far fewer in number compared to Pokemon and are tied to regions and locations. They also live in the sky, so you can see them from, presumably, anywhere – without having to cross busy streets or trespass on private property.
Overbeasts only flourish in a healthy environment, and if you want to make them happy, you have to create and tend a little virtual nature haven wherever you are. The mobile game lays a grid across the world with nodes where you and others can grow trees and other plants to revitalize the virtual world. Your newly-created gardens and forests need daily care, and Matsuda’s hope is that people will team up and tend these habitats together.
However, he also recognizes that Overbeast’s goals might be a bit too ambitious at the moment, since the game requires strong 5G connections and pricey hardware. You probably won’t see your local Overbeast reach its full potential if you live outside a major city, but Matsuda says Liquid City is working on new features so more people can actually play the game, though he didn’t mention when these plans might come to fruition.
While the point of all your nature tending is, ostensibly, powering up your local Overbeast and eventually duking it out with critters from other states and regions, Matsuda hopes players will enjoy the quiet moments as well.
“The battles are exciting, but there is another side to Overbeast,” Matsuda says. “I like to put in headphones and spend time collecting pollen in my AR forest, while listening to the beautiful music and forest sounds by our composers Skillbard. It’s relaxing and meditative, and if you are lucky, your local Overbeast might pay you a visit too.”
Other players can see and tend the trees you plant, and you can see theirs. When you plant a tree or take care of a little garden patch somewhere, you’re giving someone else a small patch of virtual sanctuary as well.
Enjoyable as Matsuda says the large-scale Overbeast battles are, that sense of togetherness is what he really hopes people take away from playing the game.
“I hope people take pride in the forests they grow with their neighbors and feel a connection to each other,” Matsuda says. “We are all individuals, but also part of nature. If we can understand that, then I hope it can influence the way we treat our real environment too.”
Overbeast is available now as a free-to-play game on the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store.
Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF
