One of the most exciting of our Project Beacon partners for consumers is Hitchery. It’s a mobile hitchhiking game that lets players create “hitchers” – virtual characters that have adventures around the world by hitching rides on players’ phones.

The mobile phone becomes a “bus” that can pick up hitchers and bring them on a user’s travels, and then drop them off at real-world places when and where a user chooses. Players can create specific goals for their hitchers, such as “make it to SXSW” or “collect pictures of cool parties,” share photos, and conduct conversations in real time with other players.

The game extends the “check in” behaviors of services like Foursquare in a fresh and unexpected way. We were excited to get involved because we felt this combination of game dynamics and social discovery on the phone would find a lot of takers.

The true fun of the game remained an abstract idea through almost a year of strategy and game development, working with the Hitchery team on user flows, design, and game dynamics. But with the beta launch this winter, we started getting our hitchers picked up, started having conversations with other folks on their buses—even had a hitcher catch a ride to Dublin.

We’ve also started talking to our client teams about ways that Hitchery can be a strategic partner in driving foot traffic to their locations, and in creating engagement with their brands. We’ll be watching the launch closely to see when the Hitchery audience gets to scale and we can bring some brands on board.

All of this brought the potential of the game to life in ways that got us even more excited for the formal launch at SXSW in March as a part of the interactive festival. For those of you hankering to try it, you can download now at the Android Market, or in the App Store, and we hope to see you on the road.