Pokémon Go, the augmented reality game which sends intrepid players outdoors in a live hunt for their favourite critters and creeps, arrived but a few short days ago on iOS and Android in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand.
Many of the in-game mechanics are sure to prove unfamiliar to longtime fans of the series. In Pokémon Go, for instance, players don’t catch new Pokémon by battling them in the wild, instead having to toss off a pokéball in the direction of their target by means of a perfectly-timed phone flick.
Successful catches come with candy, essential for raising the combat power of Pokémon and enabling them to evolve. And the game, which relies on location services and GPS, will adapt to each player’s real-world environment, for example by placing water-type Pokémon within local rivers and lakes. Electric Pokémon are to be found atop high voltage fences, and to procure certain rare poison-based Pokémon, gamesters will have to sample an assortment of dubious mushrooms and plants.
So the stakes are high, and already Pokémon Go – which was developed by the augmented reality specialists Niantic – has run into all manner of difficulties. Its overwhelming early popularity has caused game servers to crash. One PokéStop, a sort of virtual supply store, has disrupted the insides of an Australian police station. And now the title is being blamed for a series of deaths in the vicinity of Chesapeake Bay, with bodies found bobbing on the surface of the water bearing only their phones and their vintage red caps.
A glitch in the coding of the game is apparently leaving trails of candy, so highly sought after, towards the precipices of Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Calvert Cliffs. Lines of players with their heads down, as they eagerly pick up the candy and dream of the Charizards and Clefables to come, are simply walking off ledges and tumbling fatally into the brackish below.
In the race to catch ’em all, ruthless competitors have been seen paddling kayaks, inflating dinghies, and building log rafts before sailing into the night, strapped with wires and cables, prising wet phones from lifeless hands in the hopes of snatching their Pokémon or at least carrying out importunate trades. A spokesman for Niantic said the wet grave-grabbing must stop, but it is thought that he has already secured a position as an in-game gym leader.
