Kindling

Kindling

/ˈkin(d)liNG/
noun
easily combustible small sticks or twigs used for starting a fire. 🔥

Kindling is a gamified social app that brings people together and kindle relationships. People put collective effort into their groups as campmates to maintain and upgrade their camp, explore together, and 'keep their fire alive.'

Inspired by the Snapchat streaks everyone was so motivated to keep alive, I wanted to make the Kindling idea since I was in college as an Interaction Design student. This challenge was the perfect opportunity to make it real!

Kindling is being developed with Niantic's Lightship 3.0 ARDK and Lightship Maps on Unity. Players in the real-world are positioned on the map where they gather resources that spawn. Semantic segmentation allows another interactive way to gather resources called "fever time" where the users scan the environment and tap to collect resources associated with that environment. The VPS locations act as 'public campgrounds' that appear on the map as tents with the location preview images. Players can approach and deploy their own camps on these campgrounds if there are spots available to earn income by views and appreciations! Wood is obviously used for feeding the campfire, campground deployment and fever time requires food, and coins are used for upgrades and cosmetics.

I hope this experience brings people together to explore the world and not let the fire die—literally and metaphorically.

⬇️ Initial Ideation & Design