Where's Waldo? Google Maps & ARIS

The week surrounding and leading up to April Fools’ Day, Google had a little game within their Google Maps. I first noticed then when I was looking up directions on my laptop. Where’s Wally (which is better known as Where’s Waldo here in the US and Canada) was a popular book series where the reader would search a picture for the character with this same name. It was a series I grew up on, and what excited to see Google offering this mini-game in one of the apps.

It ended up being pretty basic. Waldo will appear on the map and you click on it. Then, a page from one of the books described above pops up, and the search for Waldo begins. Once you find him, you can move onto a new location which will bring up a new page to search for Waldo on. It was a nostalgic and fun experience, for me.

I bring this game up because it reminded me of something we’ve done in this class, namely ARIS. In ARIS, I had to search around on a map and look at different areas. It was reminiscent of Where’s Waldo, except instead of searching on a picture it was on a map. It’s also not entirely the same, to be honest, but it still reminded me of this.

Which brings me to the fact that my group and I are looking to use ARIS for our project. We want to use the map of Oahu and have our users go around throughout it and complete basic quests to follow our storyline. We are hoping we will be able to do this well, as none of us have a background or experience in development. Regardless, we are confident that our project will turn out well, and look forward to the challenge. The Where’s Waldo mini-game in Google Maps has me inspired and ready to get started!