MapAttack Turns The City Into A Real-Life Pac-Man Board

MapAttack is a (free) real-time location-based smartphone game that turns the city into one big Pac-Man-like gameboard. The idea behind the game is smart yet extremely simple, which makes it very easy to play. Two teams battle for supremacy over a physical territory by capturing digital points on the gameboard. The gameboard, in this case, is the city streets of the neighborhood the players are in. Players can earn points for their team by physically picking up as many digital dots as they can. Players have a real-time overview of the current status of the game. The video below shows how it works:

To play MapAttack, all you need is a smartphone (Android running 2.2 or later and iPhone 3GS or later) a city street, park or college campus, and some friends (4-20 people). Game sessions can last anywhere from 20 minutes to 1.5 hours depending on the size of the game board and total dots in the game. The Portland-based developers, who built this location-based game on the Geoloqi platform to demonstrate the system’s possibilities, explain that Pacmanhattan, a real-life version of Pac-Man in the streets of Manhattan, inspired them to create MapAttack.

“Why? So you can turn the real world into a game, of course! To get to run around while doing awesome things and have fun! The feeling while playing a real-life game is one of the best things on earth. It’s not common, but it’s becoming an increasingly awesome possibility with mobile technology.”

MapAttack gaming session can be hosted anywhere and might come to your city soon. Click here for more information about the game, and click here for a Flickr set with a series of screenshots and other images of the game.