news 18. Dec 2020

SOFIE Mobile Gaming Pilot Open Sourced

The SOFIE Mobile Gaming Pilot led by Rovio has been open sourced under Sofie. The Scavenger Hunt prototype can be found at SOFIE's GitHub. This Scavenger Hunt game prototype is a bare-bones example of a location-based game that uses Bluetooth beacons for positioning the player. The gameplay itself revolves around reading text tasks and answering questions.

When the player opens the Scavenger Hunt game, they see which hunts are nearby based on their GPS location. After starting a hunt, the player sees a clue. It is a riddle that points them to the next physical location. When in the correct location, the player sees a question. By observing the physical surroundings and answering the question correctly, the player gets the next clue. After all clues in a hunt are completed, the player receives rewards: coins, gems, stars, and possibly virtual items. The player also gains XP and levels up their character.

This proof-of-concept may serve as a template for future researchers who wish to further investigate IoT and blockchain technologies in the context of gaming. We have published a journal paper Scavenger Hunt: Utilization of Blockchain and IoT for a Location-Based Game regarding this use case in IEEE Access that describes an example implementation of such an architecture in detail.

By open-sourcing the project, we hope the performance may be improved, the adverse aspects of Distributed Ledger Technology and IoT technologies may be combated, and their additional yet unseen benefits may be discovered by future developers, designers and problem-solvers.

Figure 1. Game Architecture

Compiled by Rovio.