Tidy City is a location based game for Android phones. The game is about bringing order into chaos. Just look around and you will see many things that don‘t belong. Go there, investigate, collect – and then bring them back to their real location. It is your mission to tidy-up the city!
In Tidy City, the players explore their neighborhood using a GPS-enabled Android smartphone. Symbols on a map on the display direct the players to a riddle, i.e. an object that must be "tidied up" because it is shown in the wrong location. A part of a building or a bridge, a statue, but also a historical event tied to a location, might be a suitable object, represented in the game by a photo and a descriptive text. When the players believe to be right next to the object‘s original site, they can try to relocate the object. GPS is used to check that the player is indeed in the correct position and has successfully solved the riddle.
Tidy City also enables everyone to create their own missions. Aspiring game authors walk around outside with a mobile tool called Tidy City Scout to find interesting bits in their surrounding that would make exciting riddles. With the tool, they can take notes and pictures as well as record GPS data. Afterwards the data is uploaded to the server and the author can finish the mission with the help of an easy-to-use web interface. When the mission is published, all players of Tidy City have access to it and can start trying to solve the riddles.
Although the function principle is the same for every mission of Tidy City, each mission is a different experience. Imagine a scenario that invites tourists to explore interesting sights in a city. Another scenario might involve missions designed to let people explore less well-known parts of their hometown.
You could also think of students who need to sort out historical events or buildings with unique architectural characteristics. Special scenarios might also be created for a city anniversary or a festival that takes place. Or maybe you just want to create a small game for your kids to enjoy during a Sunday afternoon stroll through the park. Playing Tidy City lets you explore your surroundings from a different perspective.
Tidy City and Tidy City Scout are running on smartphones with Android 2.1 and up.
For non-commercial use, the game and the authoring tools can be used free of charge. Commercial licenses are available
Play the game:
The Tidy City game design was conceived by Michael Straubig of i3games [2].
Links:
[1] http://totem.fit.fraunhofer.de/tidycity/
[2] http://www.i3games.de/