AOTD Episode 10: Ingress

Today on Aspect of the Daddy, I am talking about a little (free!) game called Ingress. Ingress is Android only for now, although I've seen port of it on iOS and a ton of rumors about it coming to iPhone, there's nothing official right now beside Android. It works equally well on phones and tablets, as long as the tablet has GPS built in.

Basically, Ingress is a type game that forces you to go outside and see parts of your town you might not have paid much attention to before. At its very best, you get to go out and get some walking in, lose weight and get to know the other players that are in your town as you coordinate attacks on the enemy and set up defences. At its worst, you stay in your car and play as you drive around town. People notice you circle the block 5 times and you look like a creeper.

My first tiny control field. 

Either way, Ingress is a fun game. You find portals in your town, usually public buildings like post offices or fire stations, and you hack them for items. These items can be used to actually take control of the portals and win them for your faction. There are two factions, and the back story is really interesting if you are into that sort of thing, but for simplicity's sake, there are green and blue factions.

When you get three portals won for the same faction, (green or blue) you can link them together and for a control field. The population that lives in these control fields are added to your score. (In the lore, you are actually are controlling the people in your control fields to side with your faction.) So the more people you influence, the higher your score and the faction with the highest score wins.

As you can see, this is a game being played all across the world! It's a pretty neat thing to get into and if you get to high levels, you are really pull off some incredibly large control fields when you coordinate with other people. 

You can really get into the lore and feel like you are really out there to help humanity if you want to, or just go out and have fun and lose some weight. I really enjoy walking around with my son and capturing portals, and he likes the sounds and stuff in the game. I let him push the buttons to hack and place items so we both have a good time. Give Ingress a try!

Download: Google Play

Aspect of the Daddy is a little segment that you can hear at the end of the HearthCast podcast every week. I like to talk about games, tech and sometimes life in general when you have a little toddler/preschooler to handle. Please head to http://www.hearthcast.com/ to download episodes! Special thanks to Freckleface and Rewt for letting me crash on their podcast!