Treasure Trove promises wi-fi hot spot item hunting

Still yet to be publicly released, Justin 'CosMind' Leingang was one of the winners of the Austin GDC's all-Texas Indie Games Festival showcase for his art-game Glum Buster, a game only described in the vaguest terms as “a collection of my daydreams, for your daydreams.”

As we patiently await more details on that (which he says are "coming soonish"), Leingang has been slightly more forthcoming about his new game for Austin publisher Aspyr that sounds similarly ethereal. According to a new interview with Gamasutra, Leingang is behind Treasure Trove, a DS game that lets players "hunt" for items that are generated from wi-fi signals in the surrounding area.

It's a compelling idea -- it's nice to be able to harness all of that invisible data that we're awash in to creative ends. And it's an idea that that worked well in Konami's PSP title Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops, which generated new collectible soldiers based on that similar mechanics. That game became a mainstay of my long Chicago bus trips -- when I knew I'd continually hit fresh points as I moved across town -- and Leingang reports similar results for the prototype of Trove.

It's still not clear what kind of game he'll be hanging the technology around -- Gamasutra only further reports that collectible items also have musical properties that can be used to create exchangeable compositions -- but it sounds like it's coming together as a properly interesting portable mashup.

Interview: Aspyr's Treasure Troves To Use DS As 'Real-Life Treasure Hunt' [Gamasutra]