Tom Cheredar

After months of agonizing wait, GPS Assassins was released to beta testers in the Nashville area, provided they had an iphone or iPod touch and an Internet connection.

The App was conceived from participants in the first Nashville Startup Weekend and uses the GPS navigation technology in smart phones to seek out others around the area to participate in a kill-or-be-killed, text-based role playing game. Basically, the object is to “assassinate” your friends and neighbors.

I’ve been beta testing for about a week now but, will hold off on the details since they are still in a very fluid state and it’s sacrilegious to critique an unfinished work of art prior to its official release. The final version should be available on multiple platforms, most notably T-Mobile’s G1 phone that runs Google’s Android operating system.

However, I will say that it differs from other text-based RPGs currently available in the app store because they do not emphasize an “economic” structure as found in both iMob and iMafia. Those games basically sputter out after you become the biggest dog on the block. GPS Assassins is much different and consumes my time like a kid brother version of World of Warcraft (meaning, you become obsessed with winning, not the clock).

By far, the best component of this app is its featured ability to make customizable weapon and armor items. And you pretty much have free reign on what you want to create. For instance, I crafted a “Boomstick” and then proceed to assassinate a high ranking member in the tech community…One Mean Muggin’… (See pic).

If you’d like to sign up as a beta tester, either beg a friend send you an invite or download the Ad Hoc application through Apple’s  App store (run the program, which will pull up the mail app with your iphone or ipod touch’s Unique Device Identifier – UDID) and shoot an email to gpsassassins AT gmail. If they are feeling kind, you may get put on the tester list. But forewarned, your assassination is imminent.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 21st, 2009 at 4:41 pm and is filed under Other, Programming, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.