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Before there was Pokémon GO, there was Ingress. It was Niantic's first game – and while it never became overwhelmingly popular that GO did, it was undeniably what allowed GO to exist in the first place.
Now Niantic is taking another swing at it. The company has gotten off the ground with the goal of making it prettier, more immersive, and – most importantly – more accessible to new players. The new app will ship for iOS and Android later today.
Unfamiliar with Ingress? At its core, it shares its DNA with Pokémon GO; It's a game that encourages you to walk around the world, visit nearby landmarks and parks, and work together with your self-selected team (or, in Ingress' terminology, your "faction").
But Ingress is a good bit more intense than GO (ingress players like to poke at GO as being "Ingress Lite".) There are no monsters to collect gold Pokéstops to spin; Instead, you're "hacking" portals (the same real-world rentals, mostly, that act as Pokéstops) and "linking" them together in an effort to conquer as much of the map as you can for your faction. Link three portals, and everything in between becomes your team's turf. It's like capturing the world's massive game of tug of war, with a bit of Matrix and cyberpunk dressing slathered on top.
Ingress Prime, as version 2.0 is known, replaces the original Ingress app with one built on Unity – the same gaming engine that powers Pokémon GO and many other games.
If you've been playing Ingress for a while, here are some of the changes in quality of life -type tweaks: the UI has been cleaned up, and they've added all sorts of shortcuts and gestures to make it faster things like attack nearby portals or manage your inventory. The new map interface is easier to navigate and one-finger-control, which will be pretty familiar for GO players. The new UI is bound to be a point of contention at first, if only because it is a bit of a habit of breaking up for players. like change. Hopefully, they come around.
Spending of the hours spent in Ingress already in progress and badges carry over to Ingress Prime. If you're Level 16 in the original Ingress, you'll be Level 16 in Ingress Prime. New here, though, is the ability to "recurse". Sort of like the "prestige" concept made popular by Call of Duty, recursing sets to your level, but your myriad unlocks (your AP rating, distance charging, and inventory items) still in tow.
Niantic tells me that certain things are moving forward, but it is not possible to do so. (With many longtime players approaching Pokémon Go 's level cap of 40, I' d rather be surprised.
It's the players who are new to Ingress, though – or those who gave a glance before and were spooked away by the steep learning curve – that Niantic seems most interested in here.
The Ingress of the Original Ingress of the World. A plot-driven tutorial introduces new players to the concepts of portals, hacking, etc., all while starting to plant the seeds of the game's backstory and lore. You are introduced to the two factions and the rival AIs behind them, eventually being asked to choose a side.
I'm going through the game of onboarding last week, and, as someone who admittedly fits right into it, it's going to be a lot better than that. is going on. It feels like it's a bit more play testing (especially in explaining when I'm doing the wrong thing), but it's a big step forward. It does not help you, but it does a lot better job of getting the ball rolling.
Pro Pro Pro Pro Pro Pro Pro Pro Pro Pro Pro Pro,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, bound to get some preeeeetty weird looks.)
Once they've gotten a new player hooked, this is going to be a good time. A weekly live-action web series called the "Dunraven Project" will fill the game's backstory, while an anime series (which debuted in Japan in October with a version coming to Netflix in 2019) is meant to explore the wider universe.
According to Niantic, Pokémon has been about a billion times. Ingress, meanwhile, capped out at around 20 million downloads.
Will this overhaul get ingresses downloads up into the trillions? Probably not. Pokémon had had had Pok Pok N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N Niantic can do with GO and where GO can … er, go. But by rebooting Ingress, Niantic is using existing IP as already owns / fully controls as a springboard; they're striving to keep the existing player base happy, while setting it up to grow dramatically by lowering the barrier to entering and expanding the storyline. It's a tough tightrope act to pull off, but it really seems that they're starting out here.
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