Homebrew location-based game coming to DS

Seeing as the DS has wi-fi built-in, it is surprising that Nintendo hasn't taken the initiative to make a location-based game for its system. What isn't so surprising is that the homebrew community already has.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with location-based gaming, it is when a piece of software utilises a portable device's GPS or wi-fi capabilities to turn your immediate surroundings into a game that can be interacted with and explored.

In Plundr, the DS game we're considering today, you play the captain of a pirate ship looking to pillage, swashbuckle and generally engage in pirating until you are the most feared buccaneer of the sea, or at least whichever city it is you happen to live in.

The game uses wi-fi positioning to track your movements and superimposes virtual landmarks onto a map of your local area. Plundr then creates virtual islands for you to travel to.

So for example, a short walk to your local newsagent might bring up a new trading post where you can buy and sell with your swag, whereas a visit to Tesco might throw up some enemy ships for you to cannon the barnacles out of.

The game was originally designed for laptop computers, but presumably the developer, area/code, decided that laptops were too cumbersome to lug about town (and with one wooden leg, no less) and so ported it to the R4DS homebrew platform.

The game was demonstrated at the Where 2.0 Conference last month, according to this fullsome report over on DS Fanboy (which points to loads more screens on a Flickr account), but so far, a playable build of the DS version isn't yet available.

We will as ever be keeping a weather eye on the horizon, so click 'Track It!' to wait for the day when we can finally brave the seas of, erm, our local multi-storey car park and take Plundr for a test run.