Waddle Home AR is the Augmented Reality (ARKit) variant of the popular Waddle Home VR puzzler that was previously released for leading VR platforms, including HTC Vive, PlayStation VR, and Samsung Gear VR. Waddle home AR is Archiact’s first Augmented Reality game The company believes that AR will play a major role in mobile entertainment, and with this new AR title, Archiactwants to show AR enthusiast what they can do with this amazing technology.
What is Waddle Home AR?
Waddle Home is an augmented reality (AR) puzzler for ARKit-enabled iPhone and iPad mobile devices. It features 3D puzzle gameplay experience where the player needs to guide penguins to their spaceship through up to 40 unique levels each one trickier than the last.
Players can poke a penguin to encourage them to move faster. This is necessary for some levels, as they’ll be facing robot enemies that can eliminate them once they bump into them.
The penguins are moving automatically and will always turn right when they bump into a wall or an obstacle. It’s up to the players to carefully observe the level before the match begins, so they can find the right pathway to where the spaceship is located. You do have time to looks at the level before the game begins. You start the level by tapping on the cage where the penguin is at.
If you want to maximize your score and get a 3-egg rating, you need to collect all eggs in each stage. Some eggs might not be visible at first sight—this requires the player to move around the environment and locate the path that leads to the eggs that were previously out of sight.
This is a great aspect of level design in AR, as it requires physical movement around the 3D virtual island. Without physical movement, it would have felt like you are playing a board game. This is the same aspect of level design that made me enjoy playing ARKit games like AMON, YuME: Alice’s Dream and ARise.
Just so you know, Waddle Home AR comes with 16 full levels to play for free, with additional levels (17-24 and 17-40) available through in-app purchase.
Gameplay in AR & Fun Factor
I really enjoy playing the game (I haven’t finished all levels just yet). There are so many positive things going for it. First of all, it employs the same great “Don’t let us find a table, Create one” usability practice that I was talking about in this article.
Once the game detects a surface, it provides you with an option to adjust the height of the game’s platform to fit different types of user preferences. Instead of using a boring flat box, the game uses a beautiful cube that resembles an ocean—You can actually see fish and a whale swimming inside.
Furthermore, once you move your iPhone or iPad inside the freezing water, the game makes a freezing sound and displays a freezing visual effect. This is exactly those type of features that do not affect the gameplay but present a much more compelling and immersive place to play an AR game.
This water effect is similar to Twilight Pioneers: Dragon Arena, but in Twilight Pioneers the water cube is an actual gameplay area. I still prefer the visuals in Waddle Home AR because it looks more detailed with beautiful wave animation, icy rocks at the edges and has a living sea floor filled with fish and a big whale. The level looks like it’s floating on top of an aquarium—beautiful level design.
I really like the choice of an arctic water environment. There is something about the blue and white tones that feels very calming and tastefully endorses the other bright vivid colors in the game.
Regarding difficulty, the game’s gets more difficult as you progress. It really gets more challenging after level 34. If you are a completionist like me, you are going to spend a lot of time trying to complete levels with the highest 3-egg rating. You can complete a level without grabbing all eggs, but it’s more satisfying knowing that you were able to deal with the level’s complexity and able to finish it in the best way possible. So if you don’t like easy puzzle games, don’t worry, this game will make you deal with some very tricky puzzles.
The game also adds new gameplay mechanics that make higher levels much harder to complete—like putting traps on the floor that instakill your penguins or let you play with the height of different platforms to control the pathing of the penguins. Some levels also require moving the penguins or the enemy over floor triggers the unlock a certain door for you penguins to pass through. In other levels, you’ll need to control the enemy’s pathing to prevent any collision with your penguins. At higher levels, you will also need to act fast and interact with several objects rather quickly to be able to complete the level.
Conclusion
Waddle Home AR is an adorable and fun casual AR puzzler with simple interactions yet challanging gameplay. It’s definitely one of the prettiest ARKit games that I’ve played to date.
I was really impressed with the attention to details and color palette choice. The game looks very polished and has very charming and calming aesthetics. This just made me enjoy walking around the game area like. It felt like I was looking at a piece of art in a museum—It made me enjoy the game even more.
Both the music and the penguin’s animations are so adorable. It is among those games that just feel fun to watch and play. Although I was able to finish the first set of levels in around an hour, the succeeding levels were much more challenging for me. Overall, a great ARKit game, Highly Recommended!
You can download Waddle AR Home on the App Store here.