I just can’t believe how this day was full of really amazing apps and here goes yet another one. In this post, I’ll be reviewing AR Pool Billiards and I guess its name says it all. I haven’t got a chance to play an ARKit augmented reality pool game before and today was the first time and it was great!
I have to be frank here, I did try some sports game like Mammoth Mini Golf AR and Drive! Ahead! mini-golf, AR Sports Basketball, and even a bowling game yesterday (which was awful) but none of those game felt really very fun to play in AR. Not all games translated to a good AR experience, or at least they haven’t developed in a way that they would be fun to play in augmented reality.
When I saw AR Pool Billiards I was very skeptic whether a pool game can be translated to a good AR experience. That being said, these are completely different games, but in my experience, I found out that some genres just work better than others. It doesn’t matter, I needed to try it and find out myself.
What is AR Pool Billiards?
AR Pool Billiards as its name implies is an 8-Ball and 9-Ball augmented reality pool game. You can deploy a resizeable pool table wherever you are and start playing alone or with a friend locally using your ARKit compatible iPhone or iPad mobile device.
Just a very quick explanation of each game. 9-Ball is a 2-player game where you start with the lowest numbered ball on the table and you need to legally pocket the 9-ball. 8-Ball is also a 2-player game, each player gets to be either the “stripes” or “solids”. Each player has to pocket all of the balls in his group, call his shots and try to win by pocketing the 8-ball first. You can find much better explanation on the web, trust me 🙂
The great thing about the game is that you can deploy a really large life-size billiard table or resize it to fit a smaller space.
Now, after the billiard table is deployed you can move around it. Your position relative to the ball will dictate the angle which the ball will hit the target ball. There are two other control: the cue power which determines how strong the ball will be hit. You pull it using the cue control on the right side of the screen. The longer you pull it the harder the hit. The second control is for deciding where you want to hit the white ball. You drag the red dot to the place where you want it to hit. This is it, from that point ton is just moving around the table and adjust ing these two controls and try to pocket each ball while following the rules of each game.
Unfortunately, AR Pool Billiards doesn’t have an online matchmaking (multiplayer mode) and you can’t play remotely with a friend online over the Internet. This would make the experience so much better because it’s fun alone until to a point just to have some fun casual play without any objective. Even with an objective, those games were designed for two players. You can invite a friend to your house, play with your family members but again, no online feature, at least not yet.
The only options in the settings menu are to redeploy the pool table or change game modes, this is it.
Playing Pool in Augmented Reality
The game features realistic physics and although it is not a real pool table, the gameplay experience felt surprisingly authentic.
The pool table stayed static and didn’t move an inch. Even slight jittering could have ruined the experience, and surprisingly it just played super smooth without any noticeable issues.
The lighting was spot on and this is one of the reasons why the experience felt so authentic.That being said, the textures of the table aren’t that nice and I would have liked to see something more eye-catching, like using a lighter brown color with slight reflections for the wood and having an option to change the color of the billiard cloth. The table also lacks pockets, there are just the holes. Those are some little things that can make a difference and I would have liked to at least have some customization options.
The gameplay experience was surprisingly good. It felt really good to play this virtual pool game in augmented reality (AR). I don’t know how fun it would be playing on the iPhone, but on the iPad with its 9.7-inch screen, it was a really pleasant gameplay experience.It really seemed like I just bought a new pool into the room. As you can see in the gameplay video, I really don’t have a lot of space and having a pool table in the house is just not possible. The only way I can actually get as close it can get to an authentic pool experience is in augmented reality or in virtual reality.