AR Matrix Ball is similar to AR-Ball, in a way that it plays in a tight corridor, but instead of hitting the ball and trying to hit the wall behind it, the player needs to avoid getting hit by the balls.
The reason I decided to download it is that I wanted to have a casual AR game that I can play in my little room in my spare time. At first glance, AR Matrix Ball (拡張現実的弾幕ボール is the Japanese title at the app store) looked like exactly that type of game.
It’s a casual AR game and indeed I was able to comfortably play it in my room. The game doesn’t require any scanning of a surface which is limited in the room that I played at.
This ARKit game is in Japanese, but I was able to quickly understand what to do thanks to a visual tutorial.
How to Play?
The goal of the game is simple. Balls in different shapes and colors will fly in your direction with various speeds and acceleration. You have to move your iPhone or iPad in different directions to avoid collision with them. Each hit takes 50% of your health, so getting two hits means game over. You are not allowed to get out of the gameplay area, that square hall which the game takes place at. Moving out will gradually and quickly reduce your HP.
I think it’s Most Boring AR Game I’ve ever Played
Let’s get straight to the point. The game is one of the most boring augmented reality games that I’ve played to date. It would probably be more exciting if the balls actually pose a threat, but as you can see from the gameplay video, I was standing in the middle for quite some time, only slightly moving and was able to survive for a long time.
The game gets more intense the longer you survive, I think that the difficulty increases after 1000 points each time. There was also a slow-motion bullet-time effect that happened in around 2000 points, but this just made things even easier.
After like 2 minutes I got bored, my hands start to hurt holding the device up for that long without a break and I’ve decided to just put the device down—I had enough.
Conclusion
AR Matrix Ball turned out to be a terrible game. It doesn’t happen often that I get to say it about an AR game. The sound effect, the voices, and the music were quite nice. There is also a global leaderboard, but other than that, there was nothing else that excited me.
You can easily skip this game, you won’t miss anything special.
You can download AR Matrix Ball from the App Store here.