Bonkers Borders - A Serious AR Game of Boundaries Unfitting and Consequences Unwitting

Bonkers Borders is a serious Augmented Reality (AR) game that depicts a territorial struggle between rival imperial factions to lay claim to a newly discovered fictional continent. The project aims to be a satirical simulation of the detached imperialist approaches when carving up land borders on maps. The goal is to create a people-centric territory control game inspired by real-world events that could also be used to broaden the fields of serious and hybrid games, by providing an engaging and immersive experience with pedagogical, ludological, and technological relevance. The project takes the form of a hybrid physical-digital game that allows players to shape the game world through actions and objectively view the consequences of their decisions through a companion app. The implementation of this hybrid game was evaluated by players, with findings indicating significant interest in the potential for technology in tabletop games. The key aspects of such an application include computation, hidden information management, and immersion in the form of AR to realize a stationary 2D world in 3D. These findings also bode well for the nascent field of hybrid games.