Hell's Sovereign - Lightship VPS for Web

Hell’s Sovereign converts an everyday landmark statue in Sydney, Australia into a Halloween-themed parallel world. The experience showcases how VPS can be used to convert physical locations into persistent, location-based augmented reality experiences and includes an example of how brands can use the technology to drive consumers to retail.

To initiate the experience users simply visit the campaign URL, view the introduction and tap a button to open the camera feed. By pointing their phone at the statue the augmented experience is triggered via the Niantic Lightship VPS for Web API. Hell’s Sovereign is revealed. Queen Victoria Regina’s clothes become ripped and weathered. Her face becomes a skull with haunting eyes, zombie hands burst up through the ground and a flock of crows land on the statue, cawing and picking at things.

Once the scene is complete, a prompt appears to tap a crow. The crow flies at the camera and splats onto the user’s phone screen displaying a gruesome ‘Happy Halloween’ message. A generic message appears on screen informing the user they have unlocked a ‘10% discount voucher in the CBD precinct’.

The deeper idea here is to tie exclusive and limited daily retail offers to the augmented crows. Only a certain amount of crows would be spawned each day, creating a sense of urgency for consumers to get to the statue, trigger the VPS AR and tap a crow to obtain one of the exclusive daily retail vouchers.