Every day I find some really cool ARkit apps nut every now and then I get to download some less, let’s say, interesting apps but I do think they worth mentioning and I’ll soon explain why.
In this article, we’ll take a look at two virtual dice rolling apps. The first one is a paid app called Dice Augmented Reality developed by Mehul Sati kunvar, and the second one is a free app called Dice Roll AR, developed by Purpl AS. You might wonder why do you need to play for a dice rolling app, I actually wondered the same thing, but I did it for the sake of a comparison and just to know maybe it is worth its asking price, just maybe.
Let’s take a look at Dice Roll AR Features:
- Choose between Regular and Party Dice (“Drink at will”, “Bottom Up”, “No Drink”, “2 Sips”, Sip”, “Drink Half Cup” and “Drink at Will”
- Spawn up to 5 dices at one
- Reset to start over
- No sound effects
- Free app
Now let’s take a look how it plays out in AR:
Now, Dice Augmented Reality (DiceAR) app features:
- Choose between a Regular dice, Triangle dice (134,234,123,124..), dice with 9 numbers and one with 20 numbers!
- You can roll unlimited amount of cubes
- No sound effects
- Reset to start over
- Paid app
Now for some Diec Augmented Reality tests:
Dice Roll AR performed better in AR, but DiceAR performed really poorly, the dices just rolled floating in the air, no matter what I’ve tried it never stuck to a surface and I have no reason what it was like that.
None of the two Dice apps give you to option to create a custom dice, which definitely could have been a really cool and useful feature. None of them don’t even have an option to buy more dices.
I can think of many great ideas to make this app even better but I can really find those apps useful in AR. I would prefer just download a regular non-AR dice rolling app and use it instead, and there are much better apps on the App Store that can do the same job, even better, I personally prefer the app called simply “Dice” by Benoît Layer.
I wish there was an app where I can customize my dice so it can replace dice from different games in case I lost a dice and I wouldn’t able to play my favorite game (e.g. D&D in my case).
Dice Augmented Reality developer mentioned in this app description that he plans to add more dices with different color options. Well, this is nice, but come on, it’s a paid app and all that we get is those four dices?! On the other hand, it’s better than what Dice Roll AR offers, still, I wouldn’t pay for such an app based on its current available content and features.
The idea of those apps is that they should feel like rolling a real dice on a floor or a table surface. The problem is that when you play, you have no time for the ARKit shticks and not patience for waiting for it to scan a surface.
I am not impressed with any of those two apps and there is certainly place for improvements for both apps. I was also very surprised that none of them have sound effect when rolling the dice, this is the first thing I would have done, I mean, seriously?
That being said, I’m always hunting for new ARKit apps to see what developers are making. Even such simple apps like these two are interesting to see because it is the first time I actually rolled a dice in augmented reality, this means something as well 🙂