Control your world with Ingress

It is a game, but it's more like a realistic mission that you have to accomplish in your real life. Ingress is one of those addictive games that can be found in Android community that is not only limited for foreign players. Ingress is a game that was introduced by Google's Niantic Labs. Currently, there are hundreds of thousands of players around the globe who are addictively playing this strategic game and to be more precise, this is a location based game which makes the players go out and roam wherever they like to collect and gather points as well as to help other players who are striving to level up by completing missions. Simply put, Ingress is one big addictive augmented reality mobile game released by Google on 15th of November 2012. This is a game that turns you into a traveler and make you enjoy going out in a smart way.

First, to play this game you should have an Android powered smartphone with GPS and mobile data enabled. With the GPS, it finds your approximate exact location and display it on a road map where you can find yourself and the surroundings. Your every movement is recorded and synced with their servers and the more you move the more you earn. The concept about this augmented reality game is all about a fictitious project called 'Project Niantic' experimented by Niantic Labs. Ingress invites its players to go outside and explore the world around them since it can be played throughout the whole globe. Ingress is a good playground for gamers to interact with other players too, which is way better than playing a game sitting in one place. The game actually costs you time and physical strength since this is an augmented reality game in which every player has to physically move in their map, find the landmarks called as 'portals', interact with those and gain more advantages to level up and win missions that are planned with co-players. 

According to project Niantic, they came across a special, yet weird energy source called 'Exotic Matter (XM)' in our world, that are emitted from those aforementioned portals, which are considered as historic landmarks, architectural sculptures, monuments, government buildings, statues and pillars. Those energies can be found anywhere in our environment and a part of the world believes that those energies are harmful for human beings, who are called 'Resistance' (in blue) and the other part believes the opposite, called 'Enlightened' (in green). As a whole, everyone is called 'an agent' of their party called 'a faction'. Every player has to decide which part of the world they choose to join and play against whom. To be more clear as mentioned before, every player becomes an agent of the party they choose to play for. Irrespective of the faction you are in, exotic matter power you up to live throughout the game. 

The agents have to find the portals depicted as either friendly or enemy on their map and visit them. Visiting a portal does not mean anything but they have to get closer to them and interact in order to hack and acquire items like portal shields, portal controllers, ammunition, points to level up plus obtain badges from them. Agents can also attack enemy portals, destroy, then capture them converting the ownership of those back to their own faction/party. The next most important duty that all agents must carry out is connecting portals and create fields, which allows to take the control over a whole area under your own faction that blocks enemies from creating their fields unless they attack and capture portals under your party's ownership. 

That is how Ingress is played and it seems fun as the battlefield you play is your surroundings when you travel and is only happening virtually in the screen of your mobile device. It has become a growing and addictive game among many Sri Lankans and it is your decision to join the right community, become an agent to save the world and control it with your fellow agents.