Funomena building AR game using technology from Google's Project Tango

Funomena, the development team behind games like Wattam and Luna, announced yesterday that it is working on an experimental augmented reality game called Woorld that uses technology from Google's Project Tango.

In a blog post on the company's website, the developers — which includes Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi — briefly walk through how Woorld will work as a game and what players can expect. Using a handheld device, like a smartphone, players can create digital spaces using a combination of items available through the game and physical items found in the room they're playing in.

Using the technology from Project Tango, Google's augmented and virtual reality development project, players will also be able to collaborate with others through a shared screen experience. The game, according to the developers, was designed to be accessible and open-ended, encouraging players to test out different worlds that their friends have built.

Augmented reality games seem to be the next step for future gameplay experiences. Niantic has been working on an AR Pokémon game, called Pokémon Go, for quite some time and recently opened up registration for field testing in the United States. The game uses players' iOS or Android mobile devices to catch a variety of Pokémon that "appear in the wild" around where the user lives. There's currently no estimated release window for the highly anticipated game.

Woorld is expected to be released later this year, but the team will have more to say about the project at Google's I/O development conference. The two-day event kicks off today and can be streamed here.