Press Kit

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Fast Facts

Company

Monsarrat is a Los Angeles startup making the world’s first outdoor roleplaying video game (Outdoor RPG).

Unlike scavenger hunt games where you walk to GPS points and stop, Monsarrat lays out a game landscape across a real world outdoor space, which you walk through to explore. On your phone, in augmented reality, you see dozens or hundreds of fantasy trees, rocks, creatures, buildings and other game content, forming a roleplaying game world.

It’s a completely new, never seen before category of video game, based on 4 patents. Their founder, Johnny Monsarrat, previously co-created a new category of video game, Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMOs), an industry that now earns $24 billion a year. 

See the full vision or company overview video.

Product

Monsarrat’s future full game is still under development, but a free test game, Landing Party, is now available on Apple App Store and Google Play.

The game:

  • Brings deep storytelling to outdoor video games for the first time,
  • Builds mental and physical health,
  • Lets you play anywhere, and
  • Features roleplaying, a game genre that retains players longer and monetize them better.

Press Contact

Johnny Monsarrat, jmonsarrat@monsarrat.com.

Story Ideas

1. The World’s First Video Game in a Completely New Category

Founder Johnny Monsarrat already co-created a brand new category of video game, MMOs, as Founder, CEO, and CTO of Turbine. Turbine was one of the “big three” first MMO game companies, which made hit MMO games Asheron’s Call (D.I.C.E. “Game of the Year” ) and Lord of the Rings Online (D.I.C.E. “Game of the Year”). Turbine is now a division of Warner Bros.

Now he’s making Outdoor Roleplaying Games (Outdoor RPGs), another new category of game. Unlike scavenger hunt games where you walk to GPS pinpoint and stop, Monsarrat lays out a 3D fantasy landscape across a real world space. You see it in augmented reality and navigate by walking through it. It’s never been done before, and is backed up by 4 patented technologies. A test game, Landing Party, is available now while Monsarrat builds their future full game.

2. Makes Any Park a Theme Park

Monsarrat’s game is like a theme park in your pocket. It transforms any open space into a fantasy world. As kids we all played creative games outdoors that were pure imagination. Landing Party brings those creative games to life, using augmented reality to show hundreds of 3D models all around you: trees, rocks, creatures, buildings, and all the other elements of roleplaying games. Then you walk through the world by walking in real life.

It’s like an escape room or theme playground without any construction required. And with Monsarrat’s 4 patented technologies you can place it anywhere, even in a small space or a park with hills. It’s even possible to move the game world while you play, to work around real world obstacles like bushes and park benches.

3. Builds Mental Health

There’s a global crisis of loneliness. When we’re lonely, we look to social media to feel connected, but it doesn’t work. The more we’re on social media, the more left out and isolated we feel. There’s no substitute for getting out and going for a walk, or meeting up with friends. But when we’re depressed, we don’t feel like going out, and it builds on itself.

Landing Party gives a video game incentive to get outdoors and walk around. Walking changes your body chemistry. It literally makes you happy just to walk. That’s good for mental health, and for physical health too as you get your steps in. Our future game will also let two adults connect and play together in a safe, daytime public park, with the game acting as an ice breaker or a team-building exercise. Playing a little game together breaks down barriers and helps bond people into making a new friend, in the real world. See below for more.

4. An Outdoor “Sport” for the Rest of Us

As kids, we all played creative games outdoors, but as adults, it feels like if you’re going outside, the only pastime is sports. The world belongs to jocks. But some people find sports boring and exhausting. Or they do like sports, but they don’t have the right clothing, equipment, or sports field handy, or just don’t feel like getting sweaty. 

Monsarrat’s games sit in-between video games and sports, and can draw people from both communities. For sporty people, it’s active, unlike video games where you sit in a chair for hours in your mom’s dark basement. For the rest of us, it’s the world’s most creative “sport”, and all you do is walk, so you don’t have to be an athlete to win. You don’t need a sports field or any equipment, and with Monsarrat’s 4 patented technologies you can even play in a small space. Welcome to playing outdoors again.

5. A Game For Life. Your Real Life.

Most video games are a stress break, a distraction from the real world. It’s true that games can make you feel entertained, challenged, and inspired, and you could even make a new friend online. But nobody is living life to the fullest playing a video game, just like nobody is living their best life sitting idle and watching TV. At best video games are what we do to recharge. At worst we use them to avoid life. Humans are not built to sit all day.

Monsarrat’s games don’t separate you from life. They connect you to life. You walk your neighborhood breathing fresh air, seeing trees, sky, and other people. Engaging with the world opens you up to possibilities, like buying an ice cream, seeing a squirrel make a great leap, or saying hello to a passerby pushing a baby carriage. You don’t pause your life. You go out and live it, but with all the creativity, challenge, and imagination of other video games.

6. The Next Generation After Pokémon Go

Pokémon Go and other AR walking games get you outdoors and moving, seeing creatures on your phone in augmented reality. But they’re based on fixed GPS pinpoints that you walk to and stop. That’s not convenient to have to walk all over your city, and their simplistic “collecting stuff” gameplay doesn’t match most movie franchises. Harry Potter and Marvel heroes don’t spend all their time collecting stuff. Fans want roleplaying adventures instead.

Monsarrat’s games don’t make you walk to fixed locations. You play anywhere you want to. You don’t just see one creature at one pinpoint location. Instead Landing Party lays out a game world across a two-dimensional map area that you walk through, seeing hundreds of fantasy rocks, trees, creatures, buildings, items, and more, made possible by our 4 patented technologies. That supports roleplaying adventures with deep storytelling. That’s a far better match for most movie franchises, and when players get hooked on the story, and that boosts player retention and monetization.

 

Leadership

Founder, CEO, and CTO Johnny Monsarrat was previously Founder, CEO, and CTO of Turbine, one of the “big three” first Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game companies. MMOs used the early Internet to form communities of game players, and today earn $24 billion per year.

Turbine made Asheron’s Call, Dungeons & Dragons Online, and Lord of the Rings Online, and was bought by Warner Bros. for $160 million.

CMO Sam Saliba was previously Global Marketing Lead for Google Play Games, overseeing partnerships and marketing for all Android mobile games.

Advisors include Jack Tretton, the former CEO of PlayStation, David Anderman, the former COO of Lucasfilm, and Jenna Seiden, the former VP Business Development of Niantic (Pokémon Go).

Monsarrat is headquartered in Los Angeles with an in-house development team largely based in Warsaw, Poland. Many of its team are immigrants from war-torn Ukraine into Poland.

See executive bios and photos.

Product

Monsarrat’s future full game is still under development. It will be a full, multiplayer, roleplaying game that you place into the real world anywhere you want to play. See our vision.

For now, a free test game, Landing Party, is available on Apple App Store and Google Play.

Landing Party is the world’s first Outdoor RPG. It uses augmented reality to place an entire game world into your local park or back yard. Its 12 missions show a variety of roleplaying adventures: mazes to walk through, a shooter mission, a puzzle mission, an exploration mission, and more.

Its technology, including 4 patents:

  • Adapts a game mission to fit a real world space of any shape or size,
  • Allows players to manually move the game around obstacles such as park benches and bushes, and
  • Prevents players from walking through 3D game content.

Monsarrat is only a startup with its first ever demo game. Please be kind with ratings and reviews.

Download game screenshots or see game videos.

Small space for the game

In the News

Press Videos

See videos of journalists trying our game at Game Developer Conference, who gave these quotes:

  • “Very, very new. Never seen anything like it before.”
  • “Feels like a totally new idea”
  • “They’ve really got some next level stuff… breathtakingly easy”
  • “Intuitive, really easy to do”
  • “Gives that that next step into a deeper sense of immersion… like I was on the Holodeck”
  • “A surprisingly level of physicality, makes the world feel a lot more real than I expected a mobile game to feel.”
  • “A lot of potential”
  • “As a fan of Pokémon Go it makes me a little sad what Pokémon Go could have been”.

Forbes Article

Forbes chose us as one of only two startups to praise from Augmented World Expo, the world’s biggest AR tradeshow, which draws 5,000 attendees.

Charlie Fink of Forbes wrote “The best parts of AWE… a compelling demo of what it’s like to walk around a real park that has been converted into an alien planet.“

Other Press Articles

Mental Health

The Global Crisis of Loneliness

Caused by Social Media

Health experts are no longer saying that “maybe” social media is a cause. The more time we spend on the Internet, the less time we’re spending in the real world with real people, and it’s just not the same. The US Surgeon General 2023 report, Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation says that the time that Americans spend with friends decreased 20 hours per month, from 2003 to 2020.

We Can Help

Experts say that to fight loneliness, people should get outside more often and increase the people you come into contact with. But when you’re depressed, sitting idle on a sofa, your whole body chemistry is shut down. Of course you don’t feel like getting up and going out.

Our game can help. We give people a fun game incentive to get outside and walk around, which is good for mental and physical health. Our future game can let you meet someone new, give you a safe daytime public park to play in, and the game acts as an ice breaker and team building exercise, bonding you into being real world friends.

It’s an outdoor alternative to sports. It’s more creative than sports, and gets you moving, but doesn’t require you to be an athlete.

AR vs. VR

At Monsarrat, we don’t let VR enthusiasts condescend to us about AR.

Virtual Reality

In Virtual Reality, your view is completely covered by a VR headset, and you’re presented with a 3D virtual world. VR devices have many pixels, a stunning resolution, which gives an “immersive” feel, like you’re really there.

There’s definitely a place for VR in entertainment, but it’s impossible for your body not to notice the truth: you’re sitting idle in a chair, in a dark basement, and can’t even see your mom when she comes down to bring you cookies. It’s graphically spectacular, but incredibly isolating.

Augmented Reality: Phone

In augmented reality, you don’t need to buy a headset. Our games just run on your phone. Check out some people who called it the “best innovation at the show” at Game Developer Conference.

Now, it’s true that your phone has less resolution (fewer pixels) than a VR headset, and obviously graphics quality is important to video games. But it’s not like graphics resolution is the only or even the most important factor in games. What about gameplay, player interaction, and storytelling?

Our games don’t separate you from life. They connect you to life. They also have immersion, but of a kind that’s better than VR: you’re walking in the real world! Wow, it feels really real that you’re surrounded by sunlight, open sky, trees, grass, and birds. You could pet a stranger’s dog, buy your mom a gift, take photos of the sunset, or make a friend who could change your life. Your real life.

There’s nothing wrong with VR. Just don’t tell us that AR is inferior. In fact, even though AR is a newer technology, Pokémon Go and other AR walking games have already earned $7 billion, not to mention all other AR apps. VR apps in total (not just games) have only earned $3 billion. 

Augmented Reality: Glasses

You don’t need AR glasses to play our game, but we’ve already given some limited demos of our game on the XREAL AR glasses! See videos.

As for Apple VisionPro and Meta Quest, right now their AR headsets block your vision, and aren’t meant for walking around. But clearly the tech giants are working on future, simpler, transparent AR glasses.

Our partner XREAL is already there. They are the world’s best-selling consumer-priced (inexpensive) AR glasses. They called us “the best AR game we’ve ever seen”.

Branding

See the Monsarrat and Landing Party logos in our online media folder.

Our taglines are:

  • Can you come out to play?
  • We turn parks into theme parks.
  • Playing is a walk in the park.
  • Games for life. Your real life.
  • Most video games separate you from life. Our games connect you to life.

Media

See screenshots of Landing party in our online media folder.

Our videos include:

  • Company overview
  • Demo reactions from press and conference attendees
  • Our CEO’s speeches on the future of AR gaming
  • Game mission walkthroughs
  • The team in Poland
  • Stunt videos, e.g. we take the game whitewater rafting and rock climbing

Curious Facts

Founder Johnny Monsarrat

  • He previously built robots, including work at the MIT Media Lab and MIT AI Lab for Rodney Brooks, founder of iRobot, which invented the Roomba vacuum cleaner robot. Johnny helped build the world’s first juggling robot, and was the first to drive a robot remotely over the Internet.
  • He went to MIT at the age of 16 and played the MIT Beaver, the school mascot, both while getting his BA and MBA. He likens his experience to the Val Kilmer film, Real Genius (1985).
  • He is an Ivy League award-winning international keynote speaker, best known for stunts like getting his audience to toss around beach balls.
  • Before the Human Genome Project, he was part of a team that sequenced the DNA of bacteria, including Staphylococcus aureus, which causes staph infections like MRSA.
  • Jack Tretton, former CEO of the Sony PlayStation, gave Johnny this quote: “Johnny is the best communicator and most ‘can-do’ guy that I work with.”

Other Facts

  • To showcase how our games get you outside and moving, we made nearly 50 stunt videos, pretending to show our game to sharks and monkeys, and taking over Niagara falls and riding a tank. (Do not attempt. Stunts by professionals.)
  • Emmy-award winning filmmaker Sam Krueger is making a documentary on Monsarrat, and has done so since our very beginning. Sam was once a stuntman for James Franco, and has worked on 3 films that won Academy Awards.
  • The team once got to visit the BBC TV shooting set of Doctor Who and showed an AR game demo to showrunner Steven Moffat and some actors.
  • Johnny once took the game backstage at Cirque du Soleil and got a circus performer, a soccer expert, to shoot a stunt video with the game.
  • Our videos include an investor pitch with sock puppets, and an investor pitch as a rock song.
  • Our team is based in Warsaw, but many of our team come from Belarus or Ukraine, and their families have been caught up in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Contact

See our frequently asked questions.

For questions, interviews, or with speaker opportunities, contact us!