Ingress

Finally a current post after the last few belated posts!  Over the last couple months, Ryan has been playing a new game called “Ingress”.  The game is in testing or “beta” release so you can only play if you are invited to play.  I requested an invite a couple weeks after he started playing but it took forever – I just finally got an invite last weekend.  The premise of the game is that the world is divided into two teams or factions: The Resistance, and The Enlightened.  Before you even start playing you choose a team – we’re both on The Enlightened. 

The game is GPS based and requires you to drive to various places to go to “portals”.  These portals are located at all public places so far: libraries, post offices, fire departments, historical sites, etc.  

Here’s two of the portals we went to while playing recently:

Anytime you are at a portal you can click a button that says “hack” and you can get items from the portal.  Sometimes you’ll get  “resonators” for claiming portals, sometimes you’ll get weapons for attacking portals, sometimes you’ll get shields for protecting portals and sometimes you might even get nothing at all.  When you get to the portal, you can see if it is owned by your team, the other team or unclaimed.  If it’s unclaimed you can fill it up with “resonators” (like I said above).  If it’s one for your team you can recharge the resonators, add shields and do other things to protect it.  If the portal belongs to the enemy you can attack it and try to take it over.

Here's a portal shield, anyone on your team can deploy shields at any friendly portal. You can put up to four shields on each portal to help protect them from damage

This is an XMP Burster which is the only "weapon" in the game. These are fired at the resonators to destroy them and capture the portals. Everything is level based so you can see the portal on the left has Level 1, 2 & 3 resonators. A level 6 burster will do a lot more damage to those than a level 1 or 2 burster would

Additionally, you can get “keys” to the portals.  The keys are used to link one portal to the next.  If you are able to link them together you’ll see a line on the map connecting the two portals.  If you can create an enclosed shape with the links – a field is created.  This means that your team owns that specific area.

The green lines between the portals are the links. When you enclose an area with links you create a "control field" and it turns the color of your team. The object of the game is for your team to have the most "mind units" which are generated based on the number and size of control fields your team has

The goal of the game is to take over your city or state and eventually the whole world.  You are actually battling people real-time for control of all the portals in your area.  It is surprisingly addictive!  So the next time you see someone walking around and looking constantly at their cell phone…they might be playing Ingress.

Also, on a comical note…Ryan was playing late at night recently and he pulled into a nearby library to hack the portal.  He drove through slowly and saw a Jeep in the parking lot with someone inside on a tablet and he thought they might be playing too.  After he hacked the portal he left and started driving home when the Jeep whips out of the parking lot and gets right on his bumper…and flips on his cop lights, LOL.  The cop pulls him over and asks what he was doing at the library after work and starts trying to find out if he has any drugs in the car LOL.  I guess Ryan tried to explain the game to him but I don’t think it worked, haha.  Eventually the cop just let him go but it is still pretty hysterical – note to self, don’t go to any of the places after dark if the sign says “open dawn to dusk”.