Parallel Kingdom Age of Emergence: An App with GPS Integration

The first and most popular massively multiplayer role playing game (MMORPG) that uses your actual GPS (or WiFi) location to place your character on the map filled with monsters, treasure, and other real players. Parallel Kingdom is a FREE app that morphs the world you live in, into a real-time perpetual game world where you battle creatures and collect treasure in the exact location you’re standing in. An amazingly creative concept, does it deliver? Let’s enter the kingdom of “Parallel”, the Age of Emergence and see what we got here.

Gameplay:

The game uses your GPS location along with Google maps to place your character in the exact location of where you are in real life. For instance, I was playing in Northridge and I was able to see the streets adjacent to my location like Roscoe and Louis. Amazing.

You start with a “Hunting” dog that you must take on walks to go into different areas. As you go from area to area, exploring new worlds and collecting items, and of course, slaying monsters.

A great feature of the game is the multiplayer capability. You and your friends can team up and go on a hunting party to gain bonuses. I have yet to test this portion and I’m not sure whether it is used via Bluetooth or some other feature. However, the fact that they have that integrated and you can battle along side a buddy is a pretty sweet deal, don’t you think?

There are 9 skills with 27 unique abilities like Leatherworking, Weaponsmithing, and Archery, so the game has enormous depth to it, almost to a fault. There’s no real “ending” to the game and there’s no overall objective that you must complete in order to beat the game. Maybe an update will come and supplement that but until then it’s a little too open-ended.

Controls:

Controls consist of your normal RPG app. Double tapping around the screen moves your character, which is basically a cartoon face. Scary enough, the “random” face that I was provided when I started looked a lot like me. It worried me that maybe this game was getting more information than just my location. But I digress.

Maneuvering around the menus was a breeze and that’s exactly what you want in an RPG. You never want to waste time trying to figure out how to revive yourself while a creature is slowly draining your life by biting your leg.

A neat feature that they integrated was the multiple “selection” function. Because the creatures and treasures and other interactive items are so small and sometimes are smashed together to close, the game can’t possibly know which exact selection you want to choose. Luckily, if you tap the general area, a menu hud comes up asking you which creature, item, etc. you want to interact with. Classy move by the game developers. The controls as a whole are very responsive and I found little issues with them.

What We Liked:

+ Interesting concept + Uses GPS capability creatively + Integration of Google maps and GPS location + Multiplayer capability + Awards and achievements + In-game Social Networking + Immense depth for an MMORPG + Downloadable content (for a price)

What We Disliked:

– Poor graphics &#8211- Not a lot of animation &#8211- No bosses &#8211- No real goal or objective &#8211- Will be a tad too open-ended for some &#8211- Not enough direction at the start of game

Final Verdict:

Who would’ve though that you would be surrounded by dungeons, monsters, and creatures in the place you call your home? Well, in Parallel Kingdom, that’s precisely the name of the game. Wildly risky, the premise of the game is incredibly ingenious and delivers a pretty solid RPG game. However, because of the GPS integration, the graphics suffer greatly and battle animations are as sad as an RPG can get. But the fact of the matter is the game is free, and you can coerce your friends to pick the app up and play along side of them and take on the Parallel Kingdom together. It’s definitely worth checking out, whether you’re a RPG nut or not, merely because the game is so unique. And its FREE, so give it a try.