Let us play a game of Memory.
You know Memory. It’s the game when you lay two identical packs of cards out face down in a random sequence. You get to turn one card over, and then another card over. If they match then you collect the pair, if they don’t then they get returned to where they were.
You keep turning cards over until you can match all 52 pairs of cards. It helps if you have a good memory because you know where the cards were, so you can easily match them if you find them again.
But let’s expand the game a little bit.
How about we go for about 1.2 billion packs of virtual cards randomly spread out over the entire earth. That’s about 62 billion virtual playing cards distributed all around the world, or roughly 1 card every 80 meters square of the earth’s surface. The goal is still the same, you need to match 52 pairs of cards (that’s Ace through to King of Spades, Clubs, Diamonds and Hearts) but you can play the game wherever you are in the world.
So how does this cartridge work?
Well to begin with, it’s very simple. You pick a location, anywhere on earth and you can flip the first card. Then you need to pick a new location, again anywhere on earth, and flip the second card. The zones that the cards are in vary in size around the world, but they are generally about 80 meters by 80 meters. If you select to flip the second card whilst you are still standing in the same zone as the first card that you flipped then an error message will appear to say you are still in the zone of the first card.
Once you have flipped the second card, if the two cards match (value and suite) then they are removed from the game and put into your inventory. If they don’t match then they are returned to the game for you to find again if you wish providing you can remember where they were (that’s where the memory bit comes into it).
Keep flipping cards and every time you flip the first card and the second card and they match (for both value and suite) then they will be removed from the game and put into your inventory (providing of course you haven’t already found that value and suite, in which case they will be returned to the game).
If they don’t match or you have already found that matching pair, then the cards will be returned to the game. If you stand in the same location of one of the cards that you have picked up and matched then you will not be able to pick up a card at this location as the card that was there has obviously been removed and put into your inventory when you matched it
The aim of the game is to match all 52 pairs (Ace through to King of all four suites). Once this is done you will get a congratulations message and the final location of the geocache that you seek will appear in your inventory.
First word of warning. Once you start this cartridge, you can close it down at any time and it will remember where you are up to when you start it up again. But, when you start it up again you will be given the option to “Play” or to “Resume”. It is critical that you select “Resume”. By selecting “Play” you will be starting the cartridge all over again and any progress that you have made will be lost. If this is the case there is nothing I can do to help you with this at all.
Second word of wanring. The cards are randomly spread out over the virtual world when you first load up the cartridge. If you think you can play this with a friend and compare notes then you are wrong. What card your friend sees with their cartridge at one location will be a different card than what you see at the same location with your cartridge.
Third word of warning. The nature of the algorithm that selects the random locations means that you will find some cards more frequent in some areas and some cards will be rarer. These rarer cards however will be more common in other areas. So you may need to move around a bit out of your local neighborhood, but you shouldn’t have to travel too far.
And that’s about it. I hope you have fun with this one…
You can download the cartridge and begin the fun here.
