Ever since Pokémon Go’s runaway success, the trend of “Take X thing and make it like Pokémon Go” is becoming more and more popular. There are plenty of rip-off style games out there, there’s a Ghostbusters AR game in development, and even the creators of Pokémon Go are working on a Harry Potter AR game that uses a lot of the same elements.
Now, things are going prehistoric as Universal has announced a partnership with Ludia Inc., the same studio behind the official Jurassic World mobile game, to create Jurassic World Alive.
Jurassic World Alive is set to launch this spring for iOS and Android (signups are available now), and it both looks and plays very similar to Pokémon Go. It’s all location-based to allow you to find and discover dinosaurs in the “real world” by exploring the world. The little prehistoric dinos pop up on the in-game map around you, just like Pokémon, and there are even some that are unique to specific real world areas … you know, just like Pokémon.
The biggest difference though is that you don’t have to physically walk around to discover the dinosaurs. You can deploy a drone instead to go collect nearby DNA and then unlock that dinosaur using its DNA to create hybrid creatures. If you’ve seen the most recent Jurassic World movie, then I’m sure you can extrapolate on why that’s a bad idea.
Then that’s where the fun stuff really starts as you can eventually have your dinosaurs fight other players’ dinosaurs in matches that will probably resemble, you guessed it, Pokémon.
At launch Universal is aiming to have approximately 100 dinosaurs to find but they’re planning regular updates to tie-in with upcoming film releases as well as special hybrids to unlock.
Anyone that’s played around with the AR Stickers on Google’s Pixel phones know just how exciting it can be to drop giant things into the world, so the novelty of scale alone should make Jurassic World Alive worth a quick weekend download when it releases this Spring.
This story originally appeared on Uploadvr.com. Copyright 2018
