Today I’m going to review an iOS game called Mancala FS5 (sometimes written as Manqala. FS5 is a short of the developer’s company, FlipSide5 Inc.), more accurately, it’s AR mode. The game roots can be traced back to between 500 and 700 AD, Some website says that it’s even older, like 5000 years ago, so let’s say that the game has an ancient heritage. One important thing before we move on: this review is about the AR mode of the game although the game can be playing without AR.
What is Mancala Game and how to play it?
Mancala is a count-and-capture, turn-based strategy board game for two players with an average gameplay time of 15 minutes (that’s what I’ve read). In my experience, it took much less, but I wasn’t thinking too hard and that’s the reason I also lost against real online players. To get better I certainly need to play more and think more strategically.
Learning how to play Mancala is not complicated. When you start up Mancala FS5 you will be greeted with a short tutorial that will teach you how to play the game.
To be honest, even after watching the tutorial three times, I still didn’t get it thoroughly. Well, I just typed “How to play Mancala” and found two videos and watch them, after 3 minutes I was all set to start playing my first game.
Here is a nice explanation video by Christine LaCroix, she explains it really well.
Mancala in Augmented Reality
Mancala FS5 can be played in regular non-AR mode and in AR. The AR mode takes advantage of the ARKit feature in iPhone and iPad mobile devices with A9 and better chips.
I’ve read in the press release that Flipside5 CEO say that they have seen 3-5 times increase in engagement with this new user experience (source: prweb.com). So the AR feature did make it more immersive and fun for people to play this popular traditional game.
AR Mancala FS5 has been downloaded nearly 15m million times. This is great because you really don’t need to wait long to find an online player to play against. The game is also available in 10 languages.
To play in AR all you need to do is to click the AR mode button at the top-right corner. The game will now ask you to slowly move your iPhone or iPad device from side to side as it tries to locate a surface to play on. It took a few seconds and the game generated a Mancala board right on the table I planned to play on. I’ve also tried to spawn in on a table with lots of other stuff and it didn’t have any trouble with that either, ARKit worked really well.
There were a few times that the game didn’t nail it right, but maybe I can just blame the type of surface which was a bit reflective, but I always checking different places to make sure that it’s not the game’s fault and it shouldn’t be.
Another cool thing was that I was able to switch to ‘AR mode’ during a game. I’ve played a multiplayer match and just changed to AR in the middle of the match. Any time you change to AR you need to let the app detect a surface from the beginning. It’s very annoying, to be honest, but that’s how ARKit works right now. I’m sure this will be improved in the future.
Mancala FS5 lets you rotate the game’s board but not scale it. I really would have liked to have the option to scale it up when playing on a large surface rather than relying on a default size.
Board Themes and Microtransactions
I have quite a few complaints about the game. First of all, I didn’t hear sound when the pieces are moves. The 3D graphics look OK in my opinion but nothing to get excited about. You do have the option to change skins for the board buying them with in-game currency (coins) or alternatively buying the Combo Package which included all skins or purchase coins for real money. You do get two free themes by default: Wood and Stone. It would be nice to have an option to at least be able to preview the skin.
You can get coins by finishing different objectives. You can see those objectives in the ‘Info’ tab.
You can check out the different board’s skins in this video.
What I did a few moments after writing these lines, I went to Google images to see how other iOS Mancala games design their boards for the game. I didn’t find anything that looks better but there is certainly room for improvement, maybe adding cooler animations or giving players the ability to add props around the board, just to make things mot lively—it’s an augmented reality game after all. Those little things can really make a big difference, especially for board games. Can’t wait for Blizzard bringing Hearthstone to AR!
Final Words
I never heard about Mancala game before. I found it while searching for more ARKit games on the App Store. The game is really fun and challenging and I’m surely going to play it again. I played both the regular version and the AR version, and sadly the AR version didn’t really do it for me, although it doesn’t take the fun of the game, it’s still fun to play it in either game modes. It’s the type of games that I prefer playing while lying back on the couch and holding the iPad comfortably in my hands.
There are ways to make this game more fun to play in AR. Maybe if you take a completely different approach and use like animated creatures instead of the rounded piece and make a really cool board while still maintaining the same gameplay rules, this can be really cool. With AR you need to think outside the box and I do believe that even simple board games can be translated into more immersive and fun AR experience.
Being a great board game, doesn’t mean that it will immediately be translates into a great in Augmented Reality once ported. I do hope to see more creative ideas to make this great board game be more interesting to play in AR. If you never played this game, I do recommend download it. It’s a free-to-play game, so you are not risking anything. You pay for it if you want to remove the ads (what I did) and if you want to purchase new themes for the board without needing to wait until you get enough coins to buy them.
This is probably the most popular Mancala game on the app store. With 165,611 ratings in total , you can get an idea how popular the game is. This means that you will also have no problem finding a player to play against, which is great.
Overall, really fun game, AR execution is much less impressive but if you love playing this game, this certainly gives you another new mode to play the game. Just one last important note, I rated the AR mode of the game, not the entire game as a whole. Thanks for reading and see you on the next review.