“It’s better than Angry Birds,” said my nine-year old daughter.

And who am I to argue about that, but given that Angry Birds has dominated our house for the last two months, I was just a little surprised.

Now the first question, one might ask is: “Why are you letting your daughter play Angry Birds all the time instead of doing school work.”  Fine, good question.  But I would answer: “Because she gets her school work done quickly and because it’s actually her iPod Touch that Angry Birds lives on, and if I’m not nice to her, then I don’t get to play.”

See.  A simple answer.

Now the second question would be: “Why would she like Paranormal more than Angry Birds?!  Everyone loves Angry Birds!  It practically comes with any smartphone now.  Is there something wrong with her?”

Well, yes there is.  She’s my daughter, first off, and so that puts her behind the eight ball already.  But the real answer is that she has imagination.

I finally got around to loading up Paranormal on my wife’s iPhone last week.  Yes, I have to be nice to her too, or I don’t get to play with her iPhone either.  Strange how they’ve got me cornered like that.  But I digress.

The game loaded quickly and after finding how to turn the music off (fun for about one minute, then annoying) we started playing it.  The game really comes in three modes: investigations, spells and quests.  Wait.  I’m getting ahead of myself.  First, I should start with what the game is about.

The game involves being a supernatural bad-ass with the ability to destroy ghosts, cast spells, and cleanse the land of evil spirits.  I’m not sure what the official line on the game is since it is a movie tie-in, but that’s what we decided at the ol’ Carpenter house hold.

Through out the game, you gain experience, items, and sanity (it is a fictional game after all) for performing the above listed actions (questing, investigations and spells).  The kids immediately took to the investigations, since you can do it right then and there, spinning around with your “camera” and finding ghosts in the room you’re in.  You get more experience for faster and more accurate captures.

Actions in the game are regulated by mana.  Investigations and spells require mana, which regenerates over time.  You can purchase more mana at the store if necessary.  We didn’t need to.

The second part of the game is casting spells.  The hell holes in your area must be cleansed and kept down through spells.  Utilizing a drawing of a pentagram (very cool I might add, and would make my old elementary Catholic school nuns faint at the thought), the spell can be boosted.  This part of the game is a basic strategy game and involves moving around outside of the home to accomplish.

The last part of the game, the part the kids found to be the most fun (though they enjoyed it all), was the questing.  On the top down map, pins appear showing locations of quests.  Quests must be accomplished at the general area of the pin, so some outside adventuring must occur.  The quests don’t involve much beyond going to the spot, a point that could use some improvement in future games like this, but they did provide story items that helped make the experience spooky.  It also helped, as we were wandering around the neighborhood at 9pm, creeping near a quest point, that an owl hooted scaring the b’jesus out of us.

Overall, I give it two big thumbs up and so do the kids.  Ori Inbar promised the world that he would make games that required our children to get away from screens and adventure into the real world.   That’s the game that his company Ogemento delivered.  While there is some “screen time,” once we got outside, they barely looked at the iPhone and were busy filling in the rest of the game with their imagination.  Another plus is that, while the game uses augmented reality, I never really noticed the technology.  The game was more “experience” rather than “gimmick”.

And though I regularly write for Games Alfresco, which is Ori’s blog; I do not receive any compensation for my articles and most importantly, this article.   The app is free, anyway, so there’s nothing to be gained.  So phhtttt…, if you thought otherwise.

Think you know everything there is to know about augmented reality?  Well, prove it and take the augmented reality pop quiz. 

If you’re proud of your score, post the results on twitter with the hashtag #arpopquiz or in the comment section if you don’t use Twitter.  Thanks to Rouli who helped me with some of the questions.  The answers are further down the page, so you’ll have to scroll down to see them.  No peaking!  And if you quibble with the answer, just give yourself the points because this quiz is on the honor system. 

One point per correct answer.

The AR Pop Quiz

1) Who coined the term augmented reality?  

2) Name three “reality browsers”? 

3) Name four companies in the AR consortium. 

4) What three components does AR need to function?

5) Within how many meters is GPS accurate on an iPhone? 

6) Who created the ARToolKit? 

7) Who’s augmented reality magic trick created tons of buzz?

8 ) What was the first iPhone AR app to be available on the app store with OS3.1?

9) What types of companies have used AR in marketing the most?

10) What is the yearly AR conference?

11) How many years has it been happening under its current name?

12) Where will it be next year?

13) Name a fictional book that used AR?

14) What article of clothing should you wear when making an AR video?

15) Who developed the first AR interface? 

16) What well known anime show features AR? 

17) Who owns the patent on AR? 

18) Which company did the AR consortium write an open letter to?

19) Name three HMD companies?

20) What’s the name of the AR game from Georgia Tech?

The AR Pop Quiz Answers

1) Tom Caudell

2) Wikitude, Layar, Juniao

3) Int13, Metaio, Mobilizy, Neogence Enterprises, Ogmento, SPRX Mobile, Tonchidot, Total Immersion, YDreams, and Zugura.

4) Sensor, overlay and tracker

5) 3m

6) Hirokazu Kato

7) Marco Tempest

8 ) Yelp / Monocle

9) Car companies

10)  ISMAR

11) Eight

12) South Korea

13) Rainbows’ End, Halting State, (see this post for more)

14) Pink Hoodie

15) Sutherland

16) Denno Coil

17)  No one (trick question!)

18) Apple

19) Vuzix, Microvision, Lumus

20) Arhrrrr

Long ago the founder of Ogmento, Ori Inbar, promised he would make augmented reality games that would get our children away from screens and learning more.  Today Ogmento released a teaser trailer for their new game – Put A Spell. 

Put A Spell is a way for children, ages four to seven, to learn to spell using augmented reality.  The app was designed with an early-childhood literary expert to ensure they were giving children proper education.  Some of the features are:

- Dubi Panda a 3D hologram on your iPhone
- Will challenge your child to spell
- Grab real cards and drop in blank spaces
- Recognizes and pronounces letters

Since the game is on the iPhone its designed to be played anywhere, including on the floor of the doctor’s office when you’re waiting on your appointment.  Its also meant to be supervision free, meaning the game guides the child through the steps, so they can play on their own.  The Panda, Dubi, gives the child a cute character to interact with while you’re busy with the doctor.

It’s good to see some iPhone AR apps on the verge of becoming live (though a limited usage app already has).  I wish them all good success.