by Patrick and Meri Catanzariti

In Camden Gems, players explore Camden as a partially black and white fractured world and collect red, green and blue gems that appear around them. Then they refer to our landmark map, go to featured landmarks and throw those gems in the correct colour sequence to restore colour back to the world. Each landmark victory clears up different fractured segments, one clears the sky, another clears the trees, and so on. The game encourages people to spend time properly exploring Camden by requiring them to walk around collecting gems, and by requiring them to visit all three landmarks to win. Our colour sequence strategy game keeps it engaging, while also potentially requiring players to continue exploring more if they’ve used all their gems and haven’t been able to figure out the sequence. And, each trophy gem won at a landmark even contains a photo memory of the landmark! We used a collection of Niantic Lightship templates. We modified the Real Time Meshing template to generate the gems that appear as people walk. The Mesh Collider template is used to throw gems. The Semantic Segmentation template changes the appearance of the sky, trees, buildings and water separately as the game progresses. The Wayspot Anchors template places the landmark games at consistent spots at each landmark in Camden, and the VPS Coverage Image template to create the photo memory within the trophy gems attained. The whole game is focused on helping encourage people to see Camden as more than just a place that floods after its recent terrible flooding disasters, and to raise more awareness about climate change. We start each game with a random climate change fact from the United Nations.