Tudors Augmented

Tudors Augmented is a multisensory augmented reality (AR) game aimed at reconnecting families and young people with our cultural heritage. Through this physical trail-based AR game, we give you a critical role to play in the stories that shaped our history, transporting you, not only on a physical journey, but on a journey back in time. Tudors Augmented takes you to a heightened level of immersion with 3D holographic characters and a first-of-its-kind mobile scent badge augmenting our 2020 reality with the sights, sounds and smells of Tudor life.

This project has multiple benefits for both the cultural heritage sector as well as, from a societal perspective, for people's physical and mental well-being.

Cultural heritage sites currently face the urgent challenge of trying to attract visitors back to sites as well as finding ways to commercialise their digital footfalls, while also appealing to young and more diverse audiences to stay relevant.

This project aims to help ensure a robust economic recovery for the cultural heritage sector. First, this highly immersive game can attract visitors back to sites and, as Tudors Augmented operates on the user's own smartphone, it allows digital natives to interact with history on their terms while also saving institutions money on hardware investments like audio guides and tablets. It also enables organisations to commercialise their significant digital footfalls as user testing of our early stage prototype with our target audience has demonstrated excitement about the game as well as a willingness to pay to play.

Tudors Augmented (which we can later scale to other historical periods e.g. Romans Augmented or to points of local historical interest eg. Oxford Augmented) can be experienced either inside the cultural heritage sites themselves or remotely in homes and schools. In both cases, the game entertains and educates, reconnecting families and young people with our cultural heritage.

On a societal front, COVID 19 has negatively impacted on people's physical and mental wellbeing. Our game gets people out and about while engaging with our rich cultural heritage. The project also aims to improve diversity of audiences through its selection of stories to enable us to see the past from different perspectives, while the incorporation of smell into a visitor's experience of heritage sites, will also widen audience access to the past, particularly for those with sensory impairments, learning difficulties, ASD or ADHD. When multiple senses are stimulated, stronger and lasting memories are forged.