This document discusses experimenting with ARIS, an open-source platform for creating mobile games and interactive stories using GPS and QR codes. The author planned to create an ARIS game for a teacher visit involving finding treasure hidden by a bushranger. However, the author struggled to make the game sequential in ARIS. As a backup, the author created a QR code treasure hunt instead. The author learned that games are fun but take time to develop and test properly. In the future, the author hopes to create more complex location-based games and tours using ARIS.

1. Game Design
Experimenting with ARIS
Vivian Harris

2. Festival of Learning 2012

3. ARIS
 ARIS is a user-friendly, open-source platform for
creating and playing mobile games, tours and
interactive stories. Using GPS and QR Codes, ARIS
players experience a hybrid world of virtual interactive
characters, items, and media placed in physical space.
 http://arisgames.org/
 http://arisgames.org/projects-and-papers/
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3TH9OAuE-
c&noredirect=1

4. The Plan
 To make an interactive ARIS game for a high school
teacher visit to our upriver schools and community
 Base it on the idea that the bushranger Thunderbolt,
who really did have a hideout in this valley, may have
hidden treasure here.
 Use the game to encourage interaction between the
high school teacher visitors and the local parents and
community members.

5. Reasons
 1. FUN!
 2. Encourage high teachers’ use of technology and
game based learning.
 3. Suggest its use for year 6/7 transition days and
maybe for cross school Macleay Educational
Community fun day.

6. What Happened
 How to make an ARIS Game
 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wxKZI2nGgoEvJ
Jcb63Q5MJKa_pZErJIh17aKZnLehmQ/edit

7.  It didn’t WORK.
 I couldn’t get it to be sequential.
 So at 9pm the night before the visit I
changed to Plan B……

8. QR codes
 I changed all my narrative and clues to QR codes.
 QR code Treasure Hunt. Need ipads, ipods or iphones
or equivalent with QR code reading app eg Scan
 QR code generator
website eg i-nigma
 Clues

9. First Clue-Setting
the scene
The bushranger Captain Thunderbolt
(Fred Ward) and his wife Mary Ann
Bugg are rumoured to have had a hut
at Stockyard Creek, not far from
Bellbrook. There are persistent
whispers about a treasure. Look for
another clue at Bellbrook School.

12. What did I learn?
 Games are Fun!
 Give yourself plenty of time to make a game
 Test it, test it, test it
 Sometimes simple can be better than complex

13. The Future
 I would still love to spend the time to get it right
 I would love to make a historic village tour for Bellbrook
with historic photos popping up when you pass the real
place (the sequence problem wouldn’t matter then)
 It would be great to make a game that included the
whole CBD of the town.