With Urban Interactive augmented reality tourism adventures, it’s fun to be a dick. Seriously. In 2006, entrepreneur Nick Tommarello set out to spice up Boston’s humdrum tourism scene with a series of interactive games that combine The Amazing Race with The Da Vinci Code. Players, who sign up at the company’s website, sleuth around the city competing with other teams to solve a mystery. You meet up at a central location (either in City Place (near the Common), Copley Square, or Harvard Square, and are briefed on your "mission." Then, you complete a series of challenges/puzzles that take you around key historical sites (the State House, Beacon Hill, etc.) After each one (for example, finding a series of addresses and solving an anagram that incorporates residents' names) you enter the answers into a blackberry-type device, and receive a message that leads you to the next step. The group's Mother's Day offering includes "Common Sense vs. SmartMax" in Downtown Crossing where two groups vie to recover a long-lost relic, reputed to bestow important powers.
The whole exercise takes under two hours (though it depends on how fast/competitive your team is - you get points for speed), and would be ideal for a family (with school-aged or older kids) visiting the city or a fun outing with friends.
