Adapt to your environment with Wardive homebrew

by Candace Savino { Dec 12th 2007 at 8:15PM }

Wardive, made by a Swiss art and research group called "and-or," is one of the coolest and most ambitious homebrew projects that we've seen yet. The game changes and adapts based on the player's location, environment, and position. As these factors change, Wardive creates different levels based on the new data. We're not sure if the gameplay is any good, and the game may be a little too experimental, but the concept is certainly impressive.

You can read about and download the game here. If you try it, let us know what you think in the comments.

[Via Selectparks]

Tags: and-or, wardive, wi-fi, wireless

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Fank @ Dec 12th 2007 11:46PM

I need an R4 for this. Gotta buy an R4 now.

jhr @ Dec 13th 2007 12:10AM

According to the site, the game appears to be titled "wardive", not "wardrive".

Candace Savino @ Dec 13th 2007 12:13AM

Completely right, thanks! Did I mention that I have a disease where I make up extra r's in words? It's called "piratemania."

Arrrrr.

dreft @ Dec 13th 2007 12:37AM

I just checked this out. The concept and use of the DS's wifi capability is what makes this homebrew pretty unique from all the rest I've played with.

The object is rather simple, you have to grow a crystal and protect it from incoming invading LANs/hotspots. The better you protect your crystal the bigger it will grow and the more points you will rack up.

The game play essentially constant tapping, which gets old rather quickly. You start with a rather small crystal (in stationary mode) and protect the crystal by tapping incoming invaders to break them up and destroy them (where have I seen that before?).

Though I've only tried it in stationary mode, I can't imagine how riding in a car or bus could change the game play too much other than the speed at which the the "invaders" or lans/hotspots come flying at your crystal.

There are six modes or 'gametypes' to pick from. They are stationary (fast), strolling, riding a bus (slow), on a train (slower), dynamic, and demo.

You are graced with a thin white box around your crystal which acts as a shield from incoming invaders which is less of a convenient feature and more of a necessity since one type of invader (with a swirling flight path) cannot seem to be destroyed by tapping it -- perhaps at all.

All in all it's a pretty cool game to play for a couple of minutes but quickly loses its appeal. I'd like to try this driving through the city or walking on campus. If you have the hardware to try it it's worth the download. If you don't it isn't exactly worth getting a cart for. But major applause for the effort that went into this game. With more work this could be so much better.

Hopefully more games like this (do you hear me Plundr developers!?) will come out. It's a whole new aspect of gaming on the DS that big developers have unfortunately neglected to explore.