A locative Bluetooth/SMS game for the ByteMe! Festival. The game brought together a number of locative technologies, all accessible through a player’s mobile, to turn the streets of Perth into a giant game board. Ghost Town showcased Perth’s public spaces in a new and exciting light.

Ghost Town was a mashup of scavenger hunts, transmedia storytelling and mobile gaming.

Players used their mobiles to communicate with ghosts imprisoned around town. To save the day, they had to solve a series of puzzles and locate a number of stickers hidden around town. Clues came in all shapes and sizes: pictures, recordings, SMS messages and even phone calls. The game led players through numerous venues, introducing them to some of the city’s hidden gems.

Apparatus

With the cooperation of City of Perth, stickers for players to discover were hidden throughout various remarkable locations in Perth’s downtown.

A story about Perth, told through audio snippets like this one, was delivered to players via Bluetooth or over the phone. Finding stickers unlocked more of the narrative.

Graphics sent to players’ mobiles via Bluetooth contained puzzles that needed to be solved to progress the game, as well as rough maps for locating stickers.

This promotional flyer was distributed in the weeks leading up to the game.

Documentation