Christmas is here soon and I am searching hard to find you some great Augmented Reality games tailored for the Holidays. Today I came across a great little ARKit game called Bag It, Santa! AR.
Bag It, Santa! AR is my favorite Christmas AR game so far. In some way, the game reminded me of another amazing game that I really enjoyed playing called Sing AR Fight. It’s a different game but similar to Sing AR Fight, it does have a small gameplay area which you can fall out of, it has a cute little looking character and it plays beautifully with physics to promote an exiting an original gameplay experience.
For those same reasons, I fell in love with this simple yet funny and addictive gameplay experience.
How to play Bag It, Santa! AR?
When you start the game a Santa character will be placed on a small glacier surrounded by a bottomless dark pit. If Santa falls out of the glacier to the pit it’s game over.
The game employs simple single-touch control. You swipe to the direction you want Santa to move. You can swipe fast several times to accelerate his move. As you play, presents will fall from the sky, you need to move Santa towards the drop location and catch them before they reach the ground. If a present reaches the ground, a toy will be revealed.
Those toys are dangerous because once Santa touches them, he will bounce off and risk being thrown into the hole surrounding the glacier. You can easily lose control over the character’s movement once you start bouncing against a few toys, so make sure none of those presents reaches the surface.
Now, the best part of the game lies in its physics. Upon each present you are able to grab, Santa will become heavier and therefore slippier. It might not be hard to control Santa at first, but trust me, after catching just a few presents it’s very hard to control his movement. To compensate for the slippery movement, the player needs to swipe several times to counter the acceleration and consider the extra distance he travels with just a single swipe.
The physics are the most significant aspect of the game that transforms what looks like an insipid game control, into a fun and insanely addicting gameplay experience.
Seriously, Why No Global Leaderboard?
The game remembers your highest score and also displays it while you play the game to encourage you to break your own record. Unfortunately, there isn’t a global leaderboard. I really don’t understand why in such a fun and challenging game, the developer opted not to include it. Maybe he sees it just as a seasonal game for the holiday season, but this game, regardless of its Christmas theme, can survive more than that, because it’s so much fun to play. I really want to see how good I did in the in comparison to other players around the world. I hope the developer read these lines and will add a global leaderboard in a future update, hopefully soon.
AR Experience, Graphics, and Animation
Bag It, Santa! AR was designed to be played anywhere, even in the smallest places. This is also the first game that uses a really cool resizing control, allowing users to drag a handle to resize the play area. The cool thing is that you can tap and hold the red marker and it will enlarge the gameplay area as you physically move forward and backward—it’s a really cool idea. I still think it’s better to use pinch touch gesture because people are more familiar with it, but with this technique, you can use it with only one finger.
The gameplay arena looks really nice, like a bluish icy rock, like the Perito Moreno Glacier. I still think that the developer could have made the stage look more interesting and detailed by adding more objects to the scene—it does feel boring to look at.
That being said, once I start playing the game, my focus was on those presents falling from the sky and trying to maintain control over my heavy Santa character that was slipping all over the place. Although I think the presentation could have looked better, in this case, it has a less negative effect on the gameplay experience. I still like the beautiful blue gradient color choice. It felt somewhat calming, which amusingly contrasts the intense gameplay experience that was about to take place just a few seconds after.
I really liked the leg’s animation, which makes you feel the slipperiness of the icy surface.It’s even more hilarious after you see Santa falling into the dark pit after sliding out of the arena. I can’t stop laughing every time it happens, although I think adding a voice to Santa at some points could have made the experience more entertaining.
By the way, there is an option to choose between “Normal” and “High” graphics quality. I didn’t see a huge change, probably better lighting, just so you know.
Conclusion
Bag It, Santa! AR is a fantastic little iOS ARKit game. It’s amazing what you can do with an imagination and creativity. The gameplay is so simple yet so much fun. I’ve seen so many AR games that try to add so many features to the game, with really unsatisfactory results. Then comes a little game called Bag It, Santa! AR and shows us how it should be done.
Bag It, Santa! AR is an exemplar of how simplicity with a small touch of creativity can make all the difference in the world. The music, the sound effects, and the UI—all look really nice and perfectly fit the theme of the game. This game was developed by Studio Imergo to wish happy Christmas and a great 2018 to its fans. If this is just a happy Christmas game, I can’t imagine what a more endowed AR game would look like from this company.
I have a challenge for you guys. As of the time of writing, my best score is 16. Comment or tweet me and tell me if you were able to beat it 🙂
That game is free to play on the app store with no ads, just straight on a fun gameplay experience. It’s the best Christmas ARKit game I’ve played so far—Highly recommended!
You can download the game from the App Store here. If you enjoy reading this review, please don’t forget to follow my Facebook page and Subscribe to my YouTube channel—Thanks!