I love to browse the app store and find small indie games that I really fun to play. Today I came across a game called AR Football – Reality Soccer. AR Football is the first ARKit soccer game that I came across. It’s not a standard soccer game but just a casual penalty kick-like game where you need to score against a goalkeeper. I spent quite some time playing it today and it’s time for me to write a review about it and share my experience with it with you guys.
Gameplay
AR Football Reality Soccer is one of those games that ear easy to learn but hard to master. When you start the game, the game will ask you to find a location to put the soccer field.
I was quite surprised how large the soccer field is. I measured it roughly around 3 meters, yes, it’s very large. To be honest, I don’t know what there is even a need for the other half of the field because there is no goal there and it’s a single player game, you only shoot one goal, the one that is in front of you.
Your objective is to put the ball into the net as many times as you possibly can. You shoot the ball using swipe motion. A small swipe gesture will trigger a week kick and a long swipe will trigger a more powerful kick. You can also swipe to a different direction in order to aim to different areas on the net.
This is not as easy as it might seem. You really need to practice it in order to be accurate, it’s really not that simple as it might sound. I actually thought that I will get bored with it pretty fast, but after a few tries I just got hooked, I just couldn’t stop playing.
The game remembers your highest score and there is also a global leaderboard where you can compare your results against those of other people from all around the globe who play this ARKit augmented reality soccer game.
When you first start the game, you’ll be shooting 5 kicks without a goalkeeper. Once you able to score some goals, a donkey goalkeeper will appear. More characters will be added the higher your score gets. I was able to get to 102 and I had one goalkeeper and two other cute little penguin characters moving around the field trying to stop me from scoring.
There is also a coin in the net, if you hit it, you get a bonus score. It’s pretty hard because you really need to be very accurate to nail that shot.
You only have three balls. If you missed the third ball it’s game over.
AR Experience
This is the first ARKit game that took almost half the space of my living room. It’s like 3m long by like 1.5m wide (9.8 ft x 4.9 ft), so it’s pretty large, so make sure you have enough space to deploy the soccer field.
The AR experience was smooth without any issues. I played it indoors in a well-lit room using my iPad 2017.
The developer also added some nice weather effects that look really nice. You see like snowflakes falling down from the sky and it really makes the game’s atmosphere feels better and therefore you enjoy the game even more.
The characters’ design is really nice, they are very cute and you just enjoy looking at them. Their movement is not realistic, but nothing in this game feels realistic, not the ball physics nor the character’s, but I like it like that, it has an arcade-style feeling to it and nothing’s wrong with it.
The semi-transparent field also looks really nice. Instead of just making the entire field filled with grass, the field has a semi-transparent green tint and only the goalie area has a grass texture, it looks really nice overall.
I did notice that sometimes the ball falls below the map, but it didn’t happen that often. The AR experience was really good and I have no real issues to report, which is good.
Conclusion
AR Football Reality Soccer is free ARKit game.It’s a really a fun and addictive AR game that you just won’t want to stop playing. At one point I needed to stop to write a review, but I just couldn’t, I wanted just one more game and this, of course, went on and one until after one hour later I needed to stop. I’ll definitely be going back to try to break my own record and try to top the global leaderboard.
There is nothing extraordinary here nor an innovative gameplay experience, but it is a game that both kids and adults will enjoy playing. A casual game to play and challenge yourself on your free time. A lovely ARKit augmented reality soccer game that I definitely recommend playing.