Montreal Tech Watch

The video game mobile startup Miralupa is launching today Chromian Wars on the App Store, a mobile multiplayer game, where players are invited to battle tanks against each other, using real-world surfaces. It’s quite impressive to see the game already out, as they were still prospecting offices in Q2 this year. Their development cycle is probably faster than a few web startups in the city!

With a simple graphic printed on a piece of paper, players can start or join a game, and then control their tanks with the touchscreen. What’s interesting is the camera and sensors tracking, meaning you can also control the game by moving or rotating your iPad, à la Wii.

Chromian Wars is just a first step for Miralupa, and while they have high hopes to revolutionize the gaming industry, the game is quite basic. It has standard 3D visuals, the story won’t win any award, and the music neither. What Miralupa hopes to achieve though is to give that sense of wonder for people who will be trying out the game, and at the same time, interest enough independent game developers as well as studios in their technology. Named MARGE, the Augmented Reality technology developed the game is planned to be available to third-parties, making it a building block on both the iOS and Android platform.

Check out the game. It’s available for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, with a version for Android already planned.