Ingress is an augmented reality (AR) mobile game currently developed and published by Niantic Spatial for Android and iOS devices. The game was released as a closed beta on November 15, 2012, for Android devices and then for iOS devices on July 14, 2014. The game is free-to-play, uses a freemium business model, and supports in-app purchases for additional in-game items. The mobile app has been downloaded more than 20 million times worldwide as of November 2018.
Ingress uses the mobile device GPS to locate and interact with "portals" near the player's real-world location. The portals are physical points of interest where "human creativity and ingenuity is expressed," often manifesting as public art such as statues and monuments, unique architecture, outdoor murals, historic buildings, local community hubs, and other displays of human achievement. The game uses the portals as elements of a science fiction backstory along with a continuous open narrative provided through various forms of media.
Synopsis
An unknown, transdimensional force called Exotic Matter (XM) was discovered by a team of scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland with the Large Hadron Collider when researching the Higgs boson. Within the game, human reactions to this discovery fall into two factions known as the Enlightened (green) and the Resistance (blue). The Enlightened faction harnesses the powers of XM to transcend humanity and believes its mission is to aid mankind's enlightenment by using this energy. The Resistance faction sees XM as a potential threat to humanity and believes their mission is to defend the human race by resisting the effects of those seeking to control others with XM. There is also machina (red), which does not align with either faction.
Gameplay
The gameplay of Ingress has been described as combining elements of geocaching with capture the flag.
Play environment
A player using their mobile device (scanner) is presented with a map representing the surrounding area. The map has a black background and is completely unmarked, except for buildings and roads outlined in grey but not labeled, and bodies of water. These geographical features are supplied by OpenStreetMap. Portals, Exotic Matter, links, and control fields are visible on the map. Distances from the player to in-game locations are displayed in metric units.
Players must be physically near objects on the map to interact with them. The scanner represents the player with an action range of . A player can hack nearby portals to acquire items. Players are rewarded with Action Points (AP) for actions within the game. Accumulating AP beyond certain thresholds grants higher access levels. The access levels are numbered 1 through 16, with 16 being the highest. Once a player reaches Access Level 16, they unlock the ability to recurse, which allows them to start anew with the option to switch factions.
In addition to earning AP, certain actions within the game can earn a player a medal. Medals are usually multi-tiered and become a requirement for level advancement beyond level 8. Most medals are statistic-based: for instance, capturing portals, total MUs captured, fields and links created, various offensive actions, and successfully discovering new portals. Some medals are time-limited, requiring particular achievements in a set time frame. Some are exclusive and can only be obtained by attending special events.
In September 2014, Niantic introduced missions to the game. A mission is a user-created set of places to visit (waypoints) and interact in specified ways. Some missions list all the waypoints from the start, while others only reveal them once as the user progresses from one to the next. Completing missions rewards the player with a mission medal displayed on their agent profile.
Portals Portals span across the globe and are made visible by the scanner. They are surrounded by a cluster of XM and color corresponding to the faction/entity controlling the portal: green (the Enlightened), blue (the Resistance), red (machina), or white (unclaimed). Players claim portals for their faction by deploying at least one resonator on them. They can also add mods (modifications) to protect the portals or increase their power in various ways. If a portal is claimed by the enemy or the Machina, the player must first either neutralize it by destroying the portal's resonators with weapons called XMP (Exotic Matter Pulse) Bursters and Ultra Strikes or flip the portal using either a Jarvis Virus or an ADA Refactor. Players acquire game items (resonators, XMP bursters, etc.) by maneuvering to within of a portal, typically by walking, biking, or driving, and hacking it by selecting this option on their scanners. Players can also earn additional items and AP for glyph hacking a portal, where they are briefly shown several patterns called glyphs and must retrace them in the order they appeared within a time limit. If the portal is a Machina portal, players can, instead of hacking the portal, neutralize it, causing it to drop its resonators and mods onto the ground, which can then be picked up.
Portals are typically associated with buildings and landmarks of historic or architectural significance — such as sculptures, murals, and other public art, libraries, post offices, memorials, places of worship, transport hubs, parks, and other recreational or tourism spaces, or with business locations. Players may submit requests for the creation of new portals if they meet the level requirements. It was thought upon at the game's launch that this would allow Google to generate data for its location-based services. As of July 2016, 15 million portals had been submitted by the Ingress community, and five million of those had been included in the game. At the time of Ingress Prime's release in November 2018, Niantic stated that "agents in more than 200+ countries have participated in more than 2,000 real-world events and visited more than 1.2 billion Portals".
Links and control fields Two portals with eight resonators deployed and controlled by the same faction can be linked by a player from that faction who is within range of one and has a portal key for the other. The maximum possible length of a link depends on the average level of the portal and any mods that amplify the portal's link range. Portals can retain the links and/or fields associated with them when they contain at least three resonators. Once the portal has fewer than three resonators, all links and fields on the portal are destroyed.
Links between portals can range from several meters to thousands of kilometers and are created in operations of considerable logistical complexity. In more complex operations, links and fields can span across countries and oceans.
When three portals are linked in a triangle, they create a control field, claiming Mind Units (MU) within that field for their faction. In the game's context, control fields align the population's thoughts with the faction. Control Fields are measured by the size of the human population that lives under the field. Therefore, larger Control Fields earn more Mind Units. The opposing faction can destroy a control field by destroying one or more of the links that form it.
Development and release Ingress was released in closed beta on November 15, 2012, with an accompanying online viral marketing campaign. The latter was noticed as early as November 8, and earlier publicity efforts had been noted at events such as San Diego Comic-Con on July 12, 2012. At the time of Ingress's release to Niantic's separation from Google in 2015, Niantic had 35 employees.
An interview in 2013 described Ingress as a proof of concept for other AR games built on Google Maps' data. It was designed to be aimed at a niche market of gamers. Data from Ingress was used to populate the locations for PokéStops and Gyms within Pokémon Go released in July 2016.See also . Niantic viewed Ingress Prime as an opportunity to innovate its gameplay design. The company adjusted the onboarding experience for new players into Ingress Prime to be more thorough, based on the responses they received for Pokémon Go.
Ingress Prime In December 2017, Niantic announced that a thoroughly revamped version of the game, branded as Ingress Prime, would be released in 2018 using a completely rewritten client. The new version featured a subtly different backstory akin to a superhero origin story and a more florid graphic design. The new version used Apple's ARKit and Google's ARCore, and the network layer transitioned from JSON to Protobuf in keeping with the engineering style of Pokémon Go. Prime launched on November 5, 2018, as an update to the existing Ingress game. Niantic also retained the older Ingress game and retroactively named the older app as Scanner [REDACTED]. The older Ingress app was intended to facilitate the transition to Prime, as feature parity between the two apps was reached in 2019. Niantic retired the older app on September 30, 2019.
In November 2025, Niantic announced that Ingress Prime would be renamed to Ingress to mark the game's third iteration. The company explained their previous iterations as: Niantic Labs@Google (Ingress 1.0), Niantic Inc (Ingress 2.0), and Niantic Spatial (Ingress 3.0).
Business model Ingress was initially supported by advertising. Companies would be able to pay for their locations to be used as portals in the game, thus making their stores a pilgrimage site for Ingress players, which may translate into real-world sales. In Germany, Vodafone offered an Ingress phone plan with a large amount of data to support the game, in addition to its physical store locations becoming portals. In France, Niantic partnered with Unibail-Rodamco, and several of its shopping centers were incorporated in the game. In the United States, the Jamba Juice and Zipcar chains have both had sponsored locations in Ingress. Niantic CEO John Hanke described the number of commercial sponsors in Ingress as being "limited", stating that the developers do not want to take away from the experience of discovering interesting places in their local area.
Another form of advertising includes sponsorship of in-game equipment. Players can virtually acquire various tools and weapons to use in the game. Sponsored versions of these include the "AXA Shield", the "Lawson Power Cube", the "Circle K Power Cube", the "Ito En Transmuter (+/-)", the "SoftBank Ultra Link" and the "MUFG Capsule", all categorized as Very Rare and performing significantly better than non-sponsored versions. In-game sponsorship with AXA and MUFG ended in December 2017. The in-game sponsorship with Lawson and Circle K ended in December 2019. The items remained in the game but with references to the company names omitted. Any existing MUFG Capsules in an agent's inventory were turned into Quantum Capsules. Then, Quantum Capsules were deprecated in January 2023 and any that were in an agent's inventory were replaced with Capsules and Kinetic Capsules.
Physical items related to Ingress were initially available through Google's Merchandise Store as early as February 2013, before Niantic's split from Google in 2015. In October 2015, Niantic added an in-game store for microtransactions of in-game items using CMU (Chaotic Matter Units) and also opened a merchandise shop for physical items. Niantic's Ingress shop sold physical merchandise such as T-shirts and patches. The shop has expanded to a more Niantic-centric store.