With all the pressures the covid-19 lockdown is bringing – material, mental, social and physical – it’s important to have some distractions and creative outlets, to keep focused on the positive and not give in to despair, to end each day a little better than it started and work to give some joy and ease the burdens of those around you.

The HoloLens version of the game

One man who may be able to provide some much needed distraction to your day is Rok Bermež, a developer, self-taught mixed reality creator, gamer, and the talent behind Holosheep Studios, a hobby venture that gives him the freedom to do whatever he wants when not writing code or delivering courses on Microsoft technologies for a living. He’s just released CoronAR, an augmented reality (AR) game that you can download and play for free. The idea is simple: just point your device to wherever want to play and the viruses will fly around on-screen, turning your living room or the view outside a window into the background to the game. Your job is then to combat the viruses by tapping on the screen and throwing that lockdown essential, rolls of toilet paper, moving the device to aim your throws and keeping your temperature down to a safe level.

The version for Android devices

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The game was first developed for the HoloLens system, and is now available for all Android devices that support AR Core, a long list of which is here, the same tech that powered Pokemon Go. Note that it’s not available via Google Play due to corporate concerns about covid-19 related content, and so you’ll need to download the APK file from the Holosheep website. This is a simple, two-step process. If you’re reading this on an appropriate device just click here to get the file, go to your downloads, tap the file name and then “yes”.

You can see more of Rok Bermež’s side projects here, and also get in touch with him if you an idea for a project that he can work on in the days ahead.