A month and a half ago, my brother invited me to play the game Ingress. It is an augmented reality game played on Android smartphones. The smartphone becomes a 'scanner' searching for "exotic matter", the energy in the game, and portals. All of this is tied to physical locations and the GPS on the smartphone is an important component.

There are two factions in the game, The Enlightened and The Resistance. Each faction tries to capture portals belonging to the other side, and from there, establish links between portals. These portals can be linked together in fields. Besides attacking and linking portals, you can also "hack" portals, to gain game pieces. As with many games, you gain experience and go up in levels.

In the six weeks that I've been playing, I've made it up to level seven, out of eight levels. I've captured many portals, created fields, destroyed fields, and gotten to meet some interesting people.

Over this time, my style of play has changed as I've become more experienced, gained more items and gotten to know people.

Beyond this, there is a whole complicated backstory, with information in YouTube videos, Google+ pages, and at various gatherings. The game is still in closed beta, but invites are becoming easier to get.

From the geeky side, it is a fun game, merging a virtual world with the physical world. There is plenty of strategy to explore. Yet the creative side is perhaps more interesting. As with other virtual games, the players are participating in an unfolding story. I haven't followed this story that closely yet, and I'm curious about to what extent the game play effects the way the story unfolds are takes shape.

As I have more time, I'll continue to level up, visit new portals, get to know the community better and perhaps start following the storyline more closely. It is a strange new world that I find fascinating.