Ubisoft is releasing another Discovery Tour–its series of mostly educational tours of historical locations featured in Assassin’s Creed games–but this time it’s a free mobile app. Discovery Tour: Medieval Baghdad is based on Assassin’s Creed Mirage‘s depiction of 9th-century Baghdad, and is available for free on iOS and Android.
Discovery Tour: Medieval Baghdad can be explored in two different modes, one more educational and the other more gamified. The Access Codex mode provides encyclopedic entries on the history, art, and culture of Baghdad during the Abbasid Empire, based on the historical codex entries from Assassin’s Creed Mirage. The mode includes real historical artifacts that can be inspected and interacted with using augmented reality features.
The more gamified mode is called Explore Baghdad, offering a narrative-driven journey through the city that takes around 2 hours to finish. The mode includes 360 degree exploration and mini-games, with the goal of collecting codex entries from around Baghdad.
The mobile app was developed in collaboration with UK firm Sugar Creative, and also has a web version that can be accessed in browsers–though the web version seems to be down at the time of writing.
Ubisoft has always included a high level of detail in its historical settings, and the Discovery Tour is a novel way to repackage that content in a more educational way–stripping away the combat and high-stakes storylines of the Assassin’s Creed universe to focus on the history.
Previous Discovery Tours included Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, and Viking Age, and were essentially stripped-back console and PC versions of the Assassin’s Creed games they were based on. Medieval Baghdad is the first to release as a mobile app–though it makes sense for the Discovery Tour’s edutainment style of game.
