I’ve been longing to play ARrived for quite some time and that day had come. I’ve played the game and now it’s time for me to share my experience with it, whether it’s was good or not, let’s find out. I am reviewing the game on iOS 11.0 using my iPad 9.7-inch 2017, just so you know.
What is ARrived?
ARrived is an Augmented Reality God Simulation game. The player assumes a role of a god who must take care of his people’s needs. You do that by interacting with the environment or by making your followers themselves interact with the virtual environment that you have carefully placed in your living room, or wherever you’ve decided to play the game at.
When you start the game you have the option to choose whether you play as an evil or good god. If you play as a good god, your followers will wave to you and if you are playing as evil, they will try to hide from you when the camera is too close.
ARrived is built like a very short campaign (if you can call it like that), where players need to accomplish certain quests. When a player is done with all quests, the tribe is living in sort of cycle of basic needs (feeding, sleeping, etc).
There are quite a few interactions available for you in the game. For example, players can grab a follower, put him near a tree and let him punch it to grab some bananas which you use to feed your followers. You can drag a fireplace and put it near a follower to make him warm. You can put three clouds near each other to create rain. You can drag a cloud to the floor to a create a water puddle and so on.
Object Recognition Feature
As part of the quest, you will need to grab and stack up 5 different items. You can use the default one that the game gives you. However, the game comes with an object recognition feature, which means that you can point the camera to any objects and the game will try to deploy a 3D object that is as close as possible to the targeted one.
For example, in my place, the game was able to detect the dining table, the chair, my sandals and the bag. It was funny though because when I point the camera towards my cat, it detected it as a dog, it was a very funny moment LOL. By the way, after watching the video again, I saw that it shows a “Cat”, I missed it in the first run but it was a funny moment nonetheless.
In version 1.0.4, the developer has extended the object recognition library, so there is a better chance that it will correctly detect the object you are pointing at. Of course, the library is somewhat limited, so don’t count on it to deploy a PlayStation 4 console or your old typewriter—maybe it can, but I didn’t try to find out.
AR & Gameplay Experience
ARrived is a very simple game, more close to a demo to be completely honest. It lacks the progression system I am expecting from a what so-called “God Game”, therefore the replay value is lacking or even close to non-existent in this particular game. Once you finished with the first interactions, there is really nothing too much interesting to do in the game and it starts feeling like a virtual pet simulator, not like a god game.
I am a big god game fan. I am a huge fan of the classic Black & White (2001) and Populous (1989) game. I would be amazing if ARrived was even close to playing like one of those game, but unfortunately, it doesn’t provide enough content, depth, progression, micromanagement and a rewarding system to make it a true God Game.
I do hope that ARrived will be popular enough to convince the developer to focus on a complete version based on the same mechanics as the original.
I have no doubt in my mind that truly fully-featured God Game will be amazing in Augmented Reality. It’s just one of those games that can be perfect for this medium. Just think about it, seeing your followers hanging around your house and doing their stuff, this can be amazing. If they can persist the world in AR it can be even more amazing. I would love to wake up in the morning and micromanage my followers, making sure they are alright. Pet simulations like Miaow, Cattery, Follow Me Dragon and AR Dragon are all nice, but their gameplay value is short lived and they usually nice to just play with for a short time and they don’t appeal to the more mature audience.
People love mobile games built around micromanagement and they definitely will enjoy feeling like gods, so all we need is just having this great gameplay formula of ARrived and make a fully-features God ARGame in AR out of it.
There are many things I do like in ARrived, like the lively characters, the ability to resize any item anytime I want, the easy interaction using touch gestures, the ability to move the clouds and the sound around the level, the animation and sound effects when it starts raining, the adorable character animations and the way they look at you and ask you for food—it’s a really fun experience and it’s such a shame that it doesn’t last.
The Augmented Reality (AR) part works really well. I had experienced some jittering, but nothing too harsh that can impair the experience. I really like seeing my followers hanging around in my living room, doing their stuff, waiting for me to take care of them. The AR experience was made well, no doubt about it.
As I mentioned before, the game is lacking content and many other elements that can make it count as a truly real God game. Its developer refers to it as AR God Simulation and indeed that what it is, but the short quest line and the lack of in-depth micromanagement features make it less attractive to people like me who were hoping for a kind of more of a complete God Game experience. I have to admit, my expectations were high and I can understand why a company won’t go full power to develop a complete AR game since ARKit is still a new emerging technology.
As I mentioned in some other review, developers are still testing the ground. Just think about it for a moment, nobody really knows for certain which type of game will do wonders in AR. The only way to check it is by releasing small AR experiences and checking how the market reacts to them. If the title is accepted well by gamers you already have a good foundation to build things on top of that, if it doesn’t, maybe you have to re-think your ideas or make substantial changes to the experience. You also get a lot of feedback from users as well. It’s like releasing a tiny beta and letting gamers to test it out. There are many other reasons for that and I won’t open a complete discussion about it here.
Conclusion
When I finish playing a game, I ask myself a simple question: Did I enjoy the playing the game? In case of ARrived, The answer is: “Some parts of it yes.”. Am I satisfied? “Absolutely Not!”. It’s like giving someone a VERY SMALL taste of a delicious cake and not letting him eat a bigger piece. That small part tastes good, but the feeling after that is not. I do want more of this game, much more. The concept is great, it feels more like a prototype.
This is why ARrived is a big disappointment for me. I don’t want to treat and review it like an “advanced” pet simulator game, a short ARKit demo? I just can’t and I won’t. It was even hard for me to categorize this app to be completely honest, it just falls somewhere between the chairs. All I can say is that I do hope that its developer, will take the game to the next level. I am the first one to be in line to download/buy the “complete” game if comes out.