Ingress, now Ingress Prime, is an alternate reality game centered around reaching and capturing points scattered across the map. Tracking the player’s location using GPS, actions are in real time and players play against real people. I remember trying to download this game when I first received a semi-smart phone, but it was not smart enough. Niantic, the creators of Ingress Prime, have since added to their portfolio with the very popular Pokémon Go. Both of these games use the player’s location with objectives overlaid onto a real-world map. However, I’ve never played either of these games before today.

Now that I have a smart-phone and cleared enough space to download more apps, here’s a short not-really-a-session-report report of my experience playing this game at the same time as about forty(?) other people from my class. Downloading and initializing the game was slightly frustrating, as I was unable to get the game to find my location and proceed to the tutorial. I was able to resolve this after quitting the app, rebooting, and turning my GPS on and off. I also had to turn on high-accuracy location, a setting which I had some difficulty locating. After going through some cool in-game image documents, I and the other students tried to complete the tutorial. The tutorial starts with an introduction from the character of an AI named ADA, who guides the player through each mechanic of the game through text and voice audio. The visual and sound design of the game is cohesive and visually appealing, though it can get busy and a bit cluttered in certain locations–especially around portals. Collecting the white dots, or “Exotic Matter” (XM), was actually difficult to figure out. I encountered a few other frustrated students that were unable to proceed past this point in the tutorial for ten or fifteen minutes. We walked around campus and stood in the white points of light, waiting for them to be automatically collected when they were in our range. After standing directly on the XM points for a few minutes, something happened and we were allowed to proceed. Perhaps the servers were confused? After collecting more XM, I was told to look for a portal and provided with “Resonators”. Each point of the tutorial was supported with some more of the narrative explaining the game’s backstory and lore. Though interesting, it was slightly overwhelming. The main negative of playing with so many other people at once just starting was that I was actually unable to complete the tutorial. One of the objectives of the tutorial was to access two portals–either an unclaimed white portal or a blue portal. However, as everyone in the area had started the tutorial and claimed the area in the starting green, I was unable to find a portal that wasn’t green nearby. (The game told me that the portals I was trying to select were of the wrong faction.) When I tried to approach and select the non-green portals that were nearby, I was presented with the error message: “Access Level Insufficient”. I received/collected a few items such as “Bursters” and “Power Cubes”, but I have not yet had a chance to explore their function.

Running into classmates around campus trying to figure out how to play the game was an interesting experience. A few of the people I encountered were able to pass the tutorial, but some had encountered similar issues as I did. The game seems like it can be immersive and fun overall, but I will have to retry soon to give the game a chance, as it genuinely seems like a cool experience. The many items and lore require some getting used to, but my battery died before I was able to get any further. I went home to recharge, but now it is too dark to play on my phone safely. I’ll try again tomorrow.