UPDATED 22:35 EDT / AUGUST 29 2017

EMERGING TECH

‘The Walking Dead’ zombie apocalypse is coming to a street near you – in augmented reality

“Pokemon Go” shook the world last year with its lightweight chase-down game that had players flocking like zombies to public areas. Now, fictional zombies from the TV series “The Walking Dead” will come to life in a new augmented reality mobile game called “The Walking Dead: Our World.”

Announced Tuesday by AMC and Next Games, the game allows players to battle the undead via their smartphones alongside popular characters from the series, using virtual weapons they can pick up around various locations. AMC has said players will be able to fully immerse themselves in the series, although the trailer for the game doesn’t shed much light on what players can actually expect to see.

“The fans love how the show encourages you to ask, ‘What would I do in a zombie apocalypse?’, and in this game we aim to let players explore this hypothetical in a way they’ve never experienced before,” Next Games Chief Executive Teemu Huuhtanen said in a statement. “AR enables players to live through the fight for survival in a whole new way in their familiar surroundings. We bring the apocalypse into ‘Our World,’ through the lens of your device camera.”

When Niantic’s “Pokemon Go” sprang to life, it quickly became a sensation all over the world with a kind of cultish following. It’s estimated that it has been downloaded around 750 million times and has about 65 million active users each month. Most people thought that would result in a slew of similar AR games coming to the market, which didn’t happen.

“Game of Thrones’ might be the most-watched TV show around the world these days, but “The Walking Dead” retains a solid second place. Bringing virtual zombies into streets would seem to be a smart move, but it’s not yet clear if the Pokemon craze can be repeated. Next Games already has a popular Walking Dead mobile strategy game called “The Walking Dead: No Man’s Land,” which has been downloaded 16 million times since its launch in October 2015.

No release date has been given as yet, but it will be available from iTunes’ App Store and Google Play.

Image: Next Games

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