Today I went out to do some light hiking in the morning and relax close to nature. I looked into different places and eventually decided to go to the northern part of Seoul, to the Dream Forest. It’s also known as Odong Geullin Park, located at Bung-dong, Gangbuk-gu.
Of course, I had to take advantage of that beautiful green place and the spring cherry blossom, and I’ve decided to play a new AR game while I was there—that game is Bombaroom AR. It’s a new Augmented Reality (AR) target shooting game, developed using Unity, and was released recently for iOS on the App Store.
The game is lacking some major features, you can’t change its size and the canon’s aiming control seems to be buggy. I also found the virtual joypad to be uncomfortable to use. I’ve decided not to put a full review, but I intend to do this at a later time when new features are added and some of those bugs are fixed.
Anyways, after burning some calories walking around the big park, I took some time playing the game in different areas.
Check this video I made at the Dream Forest!
About Bombaroom AR
Bombaroom AR is a casual augmented reality target shooting game. You have control over a rotary cannon. You can use rotate the canon up, down, left and right.
At the beginning of the round, you need to place the cannon on a surface and then place the target. The targets are usually buildings and other moving targets, like boasts. Each level, the goal is to clear up all targets.
The developer has done a remarkable job in making sure each level feels fresh, unique and adds enhances the gameplay experience.
You first start with a single bullseye target for practice. Then you move to taking down a single building, at higher levels, there are moving targets (e.g. ships) and some targets even shoot directly at you. At the right side, you can see the number of lives left, your highest score and the number of cannonballs left. You have to clear the level with the limited amount of balls that you have, failing to do so means failing and starting the level all over again.
To shoot a cannonball you need to tap on the shoot button. The longer you hold it, the more powerful the shot is. So basically, the controls are based on setting an angle and nailing the power right, kind of like the game Worms.
As of the time of writing, there are a total of 30 levels. I still haven’t finished them all and there is plenty to go. The game is fun and challenging. My main problem was is that the controls felt clunky and the aiming with the cannon felt way off, so the gameplay felt quite frustrating.
AR Experience
There is no way to enlarge the game, which was really frustrating. I played the game outdoors only to find out that cannon can only be spawned at a size of a tennis ball. This has to be addressed, obviously.
The game also, even at its small footprint, takes quite a lot of space. You can’t just put the target very close to the cannon. Furthermore, the initialization of the game requires the player to first position the cannon and then the target, why? I have no idea. Why not just let players put the entire game in one go and let them rotate it as they found fit.
Furthermore, the target placement has very small placement margin, and it was very annoying to find exactly the right spot to put it down. Again, I recommend the developer not to use this 2-stage initialization process, it’s even become more annoying when you need to do it every single level!
One last feature is the ability to slow down time and see the bullet moving at slow speed. I find it useless in this game. Maybe if the game had really cool building destruction and explosions it would look nice, but it doesn’t.
Playing the game in Dream Forest, Seoul
As this is not a review, I won’t dive into more details. I just want to let you know that game is still pending achievements, global leaderboard and there is even a plan to bring a multiplayer game mode as well (yes please!).
Soon the cherry blossom in Seoul will be over. I think that Bombaroom AR is the last game that I played that I was able to record videos of it with beautiful cherry blossom views.
The Dream Forest is a great place to walk and relax, but as you know me, AR goes with me wherever I go. After a few minutes of focusing on breathing and watching the views, I need to put something virtual into the world.
If you come to Seoul and you need to breathe some fresh air and relax, Dream Forest is a good place to go. It’s also a great place to shoot some AR gaming footage 🙂
Summary
I hope you enjoyed our little trip, I mean the game’s hands-on :). I recommend checking this game out. It is a paid game but had no regrets paying for it and I enjoy supporting developers who make fine AR games. I definitely going to put more time into finishing all levels and also hope to see the game receiving updates that tackle some of the issues that I’ve mentioned.
You can download bombaroom AR from the App Store here.
I wish the developer success with his new AR game. To you guys, I hope you enjoy this somewhat exotic game preview post. I’ll do my best to bring you more previews like this in the future. Just to spice things up and makes things more visually attractive. See you in the next post. Oh, If you enjoy reading my content, please make sure you subscribe to my YouTube channel. Thank you.