Event Coverage

Ever wished for your own pet dinosaur? Oriinokards makes that wish a reality

By Salehuddin Bin Husin - 31 Jul 2015

Ever wished for your own pet dinosaur? Oriinokards makes that wish a reality

For a new product, there was a pretty good response from the public.

Augmented Reality games aren't exactly new, but a mobile augmented reality games that combine aspects of Tamagochi and Pokemon? We don't think one exists. Or rather, there wasn't one until Oriinokards came along.

Oriinokards has been in development for at least two years, with the beta just recently concluding in Indonesia. The brainchild of three different founders, Oriinokards uses proprietary AR tech to showcase its dinos. Targeted at young kids, the app aims to entertain them while also teaching them about the creatures.

Asun Mawardi, one of Oriinokards' founders, giving a presentation at the launch.

The essential part of the Oriinokards game, the Oriinokards app, is available for Android and iOS devices right now. It's free, so all you need to do is download the app from the respective marketplaces and you're all set, though you'll need at least a basic card before you can start playing.

The app's main menu. Pet lets you play with your AR dino, Battle lets you fight other dinos with your dino and Manage lets you scan in new dinosaurs to bind to your account as well as other options. Like an RPG, you'll level up as you play and if you reach Level 99 (the level cap for now), you'll get a special reward.

The premise of Oriinokards is simple. You have your own personal dinosaur that you can raise as a virtual pet and then take it to battle against other Oriinokards owners online. Unlike other card games, none of the cards are random. If you want to have an Oviraptor as a pet, you just get the Oviraptor basic card pack. There are 13 dinosaurs available right now, with favourites like the T-Rex, Triceratops and Oviraptors in the first wave, with more to come in the upcoming months.

A single Basic Card costs $14.90 while pre-selected packs of three or five cards cost $39.90 and $59.90 respectively.

Once you have your Basic Card, you scan it into the app to bind it to your account. Since customization options are all bound to a registered card, you'll need the same card whenever you want to play with that dinosaur. Oriinokards will be introducing a 'Master' Card in the future, which will allow you to save all your different dinosaurs to it. That way, you can just cycle through your dinosaurs with just one card, instead of constantly swapping in and out the individual cards. For now though, you'll have to bear with it.

With the Basic Card, you gain access to the virtual pet portion of Oriinokards. Here you can raise and take care of your AR dino. Like Tamagochis (or Digimons), you can wash, medicate and feed your dino. You can also read a little bit about the dino's biology and history.

One of Oriinokards' founders, Nicola Ransome-Goh, teaching a volunteer to how to play with a T-Rex.

The cards are nicely illustrated and are made from sturdy materials. On the reverse side are stats about the dinosaur on the front.

Once you've registered your card in the Manage section of the app, all that's left is to go to the Pet section and scan your card to have it materialize a model of your dinosaur.

We got a complimentary card, a Stegosaurus. The model is pretty decent for a mobile rendering, though it's obviously nowhere near the quality of dinosaurs seen in the Jurassic Park movies.

There's even voice over so you don't need to read the text if you don't want to.

If you want to battle with your dino though, you're going to need to purchase a Battle Card. You only need one Battle Card to battle, so you won't need to keep buying more as your collection grows.

Action and Battle Cards are $9.90 and $1.90 respectively.

You can also get the Action Cards, which are dino specific, to give your custom dinosaur new moves. They aren't required, but they add variety.

Apart from the cards, there was one other piece of Oriinokards merchandise available at the launch yesterday; the Oriinokards shirts.

The shirts cost $39.90.

Like the cards, the shirts feature all 13 of the available dinosaurs in the first wave. These aren't normal shirts though. If you use the Oriinokards app to scan the shirts, you'll get to see a cool animation of whatever dino is on the shirt. It's a cool bonus for fans, similar to how Prynt used embeds videos in photos.

The Oriinokards booth at Ngee Ann City even has a baby Triceratops.

If you're interested in nabbing a virtual dinosaur of your own, you can grab the cards at the Oriinokards booth at Ngee Ann City's B2 Atrium (for the next few days) or at all TIMES Bookstores, Action Toys outlets, Kids Story shops and Playstore at Great World City.

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