5 AR smartphone games to transport you into a virtual world

Harry Potter: Wizards Unite

From the company that made Pokemon Go, this is the newest AR-based game for mobiles. It takes the Harry Potter franchise and tries to make a wizard out of everyone.

The game may not have received the same traction as Pokemon Go, but it already has millions of downloads on both Android and iOS smartphones. It requires you to walk around in the real world, find magical anomalies and fix them. It uses the phone’s camera to put these wizards, magical objects, creatures etc. directly into your surroundings. If you’re a Harry Potter fan, this may make for an addictive few months of gaming.

Pokémon Go

We have written about this already. This is game that effectively revolutionized this market. Pokémon Go is what Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is based on. Inspired by the popular anime franchise, Pokémon, it has players walking around in the real world catching their own “pocket monsters". Pokémon Go, of course, isn’t new anymore, but it has a pretty significant following worldwide. If you haven’t played it yet, this is worth a shot.

Ingress Prime

While Wizards Unite and Pokémon Go are both undeniably popular, this is the game that actually gave birth to those two. Google’s Ingress wasn’t quite as popular as the other two games, but it provided the framework for Niantic Labs to build Pokemon Go.

Ingress works the same way as the two above , but it doesn’t have the pop-culture presence that those can bring, since it’s not part of any popular franchise. That said, it still makes for hours of fun as you go around the world capturing locations for your team.

Jurassic World Alive

Unlike in films like Jurassic Park, dinosaurs may never exist on Earth again, but if you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to see one in your neighbourhood, this is your best bet. Jurassic World Alive puts dinosaurs in the real world using AR, and you have to save them from a second extinction. It works much like Pokémon Go, but capturing dinosaurs is the primary objective.

Warhammer: Age of Sigmar

Warhammer is a well-known name in the industry but it’s more fun with AR features. Among the first to use Apple’s AR tools for iOS, this game allows you to put your mecha-like (“mecha’ stands for mechanical in Japanese) robots into the real-world around you, and have battles with whatever is around you as the backdrop. It doesn’t use geolocation like the games mentioned above but it’s still loads of fun. It’s a great game to get your first taste of AR gaming with.