A group of students at the University of Advancing Technology (UAT) in Tempe, Arizona, have come together to create a mobile augmented reality escape game that can be played in the palm of your hand.

Simply titled, ‘Escape Room AR’, the technology uses augmented reality to create digital objects that are visible through the player’s smartphone to look at though they’re part of the real world.

To play the game, the player’s phone detects shapes that have been printed out on paper, and then displays a virtual object on the user’s phone that coincides with the printed shape. They then interact with the objects and solve puzzles to eventually ‘escape’ – exactly the same as the classic escape room concept.

Project manager Lindsey Boggs said, “It really takes traditional escape rooms and puts them in the homes of the players.”

She went on to say, “When you play the game, it’s actually really cool to do all the puzzles and figure out because it’s not all handed to you – it’s intuitive enough that you can play through on your own.”

The game itself took six months to develop and is in the early later of development but won’t be available for a wider audience until early 2021 for both Android and iOS!