Rangers Wanted
game design and narrative consultant, via Hidden Switch at Trigger XR, 2022–2024
Developed with Niantic for the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, this AR conservation game has Theodore Roosevelt deputize kids as rangers to rewild their own rooms and yards.
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Rangers Wanted teaches conservation to children between eight and sixteen who will never reach Medora, North Dakota, where the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library stands. Roosevelt swears the player in as a ranger and sends them to rescue American animals: bison, ocelots, sandhill cranes, beavers, monarch butterflies. The rescues happen in whatever room the child is standing in. It was made with Niantic, Trigger XR and Future of Storytelling.
The gathering and rewilding mechanic and the pollination mechanic were designed here. A player collects materials by painting over their own floor and walls, then puts an animal’s home down in the space they have cleared. The concept scans show a beaver picking sticks off a bedroom floor to dam a bathtub.
It launched as Rangers Wanted on 19 February 2024.
Repair the beaver dam, built onto a scan of the player's own back yard.
The beaver: scan and gather sticks from the room, then build a dam in the bathtub.
Find the ocelot cubs, hidden in real foliage.
Concept scans for the gathering, rewilding and pollination mechanics.
Badge collection and ranger rank.
Hand-shape studies, using the player's own hands as an input surface.