New Releases

MonkeyBox #1: Polarized is an experimental game for iOS where you'll progress the story by taking pictures

Available now for $0.99

MonkeyBox #1: Polarized is an experimental game for iOS where you'll progress the story by taking pictures

Having said goodbye to Carcassonne recently TheCodingMonkeys have returned with an interesting sounding new game called MonkeyBox #1: Polarized that makes use of your phone's camera to progress the story. It's available now for iOS as a premium title following its launch last Friday.

It marks the first entry into TheCodingMonkey's new MonkeyBox series that will focus more on experimental, shorter experiences. They're hoping to bring a variety of interesting concepts to the table that demonstrates everything that mobile games are capable of achieving.

It's certainly a very cool idea and I'm intrigued to see what other games and ideas they'll come up with in future. With Polarized you will be taking pictures of objects in the real world so that they can be utilised in the story itself. So if the protagonist Clara is need of a ladder, you can get her one by snapping a picture of one in the real world.

Similarly, she might be feeling a tad parched, so taking a picture of a drink will allow her to quench her thirst. It's all powered using iOS Machine Learning capabilities and image recognition, hence why it's only available for Apple devices. I'm very interested to see how well this works.

The story itself will see players trying to solve the mystery of what happened to Clara one wintry night in December. She doesn't quite remember - or at least doesn't want to reveal all the details - everything that took place so you'll be snapping pictures of various objects to help uncover the whole story.

It plays out through sections of text describing Clara's actions with images that are represented by Polaroids. Each time you take a photo it will then progress the story a little further whilst providing a little description of what happens next.

Polarized is available now over on the App Store. It's a premium title that costs $0.99.

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Stephen Gregson-Wood
Stephen Gregson-Wood
Stephen brings both a love of games and a very formal-sounding journalism qualification to the Pocket Gamer team.