In this post, I am going to review an adorable game called Sing AR Fight. It’s an easy and fun casual ARKit fighting game with single-player and both online and local multiplayer support. The multiplayer is yet to be released as of the time of writing this review. When things like that happen, I serve my self the opportunity to update the review and the score accordingly so it will reflect the game as a whole with the multiplayer version of it. As for now, this review reflects my impressions of the single-player game mode.
What’s with the weird name?
This catchy name was the first thing that caught my attention. I wanted to know what this game is. I saw a boxing glove and I saw the world multiplayer mentioned and I was immediately hooked because I love action multiplayer games.
If I can try to describe the game in simple words, I would say that it’s like you put 4 draws in a small arena and let them fight Sumo against each other without hands while singing. Sound hilarious, because that what this game looks and feels like.
How do you play Sing AR Fight?
Each match consists of four gnome characters. The game was designed to be used with just a single finger. When the game stars your gnome doesn’t move but always rotate in place. You tap and hold on the screen to make it move. To stop the gnome from moving further, you raise your finger from the touchscreen of your iPhone or iPad.
There are three 60-second rounds. Your goal is to achieve the highest score among the four gnomes after finishing those three consecutive matches. There can only be one winner, the one with the highest score.
When the game starts, there will be a microphone in the middle of the arena. It changes position slightly and randomly so everyone has a chance to grab it. If your gnome gets the microphone he will start singing, and oh boy that song is so beautiful, I can listen to this song for hours.Now, once you get the mic, you also start getting around 2 points per second. This is why it’s important to try to get the microphone and hold it as long as possible. You can also grab the microphone by pushing a gnome who is holding the microphone outside the arena (I will talk about the gameplay mechanics in a second.
There are also power-ups spread around the arena, some are good for you some are not. For example, if you pick the flower you get extra points. If you touch the mushroom, you lose points (it’s a poison mushroom I assume). If you touch the bomb, you push all closeby gnomes by like an almost all the size of the arena.If the gnomes are near the edges, the will be pushed out of the arena. You can use it strategically and only rush to it when the other swarfs are close by. This way, you can push out several gnomes out of the arena at the same time. Also be careful not standing near it, because other dwarves can use the same trick.
Now about the gameplay movement mechanics. The objective in each round is to try to push the other gnomes out of the circular arena. The trick here is good timing. As I mentioned, the dwarves are rotating by themselves. I think they start rotating clockwise (to their right) and every time they bump against another gnome their rotation changes to the opposite direction. When you tap and hold, your gnome will start moving straight in the direction he is facing without rotation. You need to time your straight movement in order to try to push the other gnomes out of the circle. For each gnome you push, you can one point.
Now, each dwarf that falls out of the arena spawns immediately after in his initial position where he first started the round. This funny and non-violent singing sumo competition lasts until the “Final” round, where the gnome with the highest score wins the match.
That part was long, I hope I got everything right though.
Is Sing AR Fight a fun game?
I can speak for myself of course and in my opinion, this is an immensely fun and addictive game. It surprises me how sometimes such simple gameplay mechanics can be so enjoyable. Maybe it’s because they are simple and accessible. That being said, I think it’s the combination of several things, including the music which is great, the 3D character design which is also charming and the added rotation mechanics that makes the entire fight scene looks outstandingly amusing to watch.
This game is a breath of fresh air not just in augmented reality but in mobile games in general. I love those really simple mobile games that get you hooked and you just can’t stop playing them.
I played against 3 bots. I’m sure that the multiplayer will be ten times more fun because you know you are playing against real players. I do hope that the developer will add a rewarding and progression system, to make the game more attractive to those who want to invest time in getting better in the better. There are many developers fail to do so and the game dies really quickly. I do hope this is not the case here.
I love multiplayer games and I think they are really magical in AR. After playing a game like The Machines, I felt like playing a more casual multiplayer Augmented Reality game, something that won’t be stressful. I think that once the multiplayer of this games comes out, I’ll have that missing part.
This is a game for all ages. It’s rated 4+ on the App Store. This is a very accessible game for kids, they can learn it in a few seconds. It’s probably the most casual ARKit game you ever played.
AR Experience & Visuals
Sing AR Fight is an ARKit Augmented Reality (AR) game. This means that you can only play is on ARKIt compatible iPhone and iPad mobile devices.
The AR experience was excellent through the entire time I’ve played the game. The game will scan the environment to look for a surface. It takes a few moments (Depends on the area you play) and it will spawn the arena. The arena itself looks pretty, very detailed, vivid and lively, like a beautiful tiny little village that was taken from kids’ fairytale story. I felt happy just looking it. I’ve read on the official app page on the App Store that the developer plans to add more arena, which is great. I wonder if he plans to also make changes to the size of the arena or add some other cool stuff…mmm?
The arena itself is resizable. You can fit int on a small table or like what I did, I put it on the floor in the living room. I think the largest size I was able to make is around 2 meters, but I am not 100% sure.
Really, no complains, only praises. It’s a very polished game and you can see that some very creative people worked on it.
So is there anything I didn’t like about the game?
With all those praises said and done, without the expected feature, the replay value is very lacking. This is why I believe the multiplayer and hopefully, a rewarding progression system can improve the replay value and can encourage players to come back and play more of this game. Playing against bots is fun for only a few rounds, but that’s about it. After some time you start losing interest in it. I have nothing against single-player games, don’t get me wrong. The thing is that there isn’t any increment in the difficulty that will challenge the player. Will I be interested to play a game that I always win? Probably not.
A kid at the age of four won’t have a problem with that I can tell you that, but teens and the more mature audience will. The question is which audience the developer tries to appeal the most? When I saw the word multiplayer mentioned, I knew that this game is also aimed at teens a broader audience, not just kids.
The good news is that the multiplayer is on its way and hopefully some more cool content and unlockable and rewarding content that will keep wanting to play this game for more than a few days. Mobile games are easily replaceable. There are thousands of them. Even in AR, which is just making its first baby moves, it’s very important to invest in that area and make the game attractive for a longer period of time.
Sing AR Fight doesn’t really take advantage of ARKit to deliver an experience that is very unique in AR. You are just an observer. There is no use of positioning or anything that takes use of that technology to come up with something really extraordinary. It’s OK, not every game has to take use of that and nothing is wrong with that. I just get more excited seeing games that really bring something completely different to the table and show gameplay mechanics that you won’t get to enjoy anywhere else just in AR. The AR visual “magic” still works in this game regardless, like in most AR games that I’ve played.
I like Sing AR Fight so much that I don’t want it do end like a short ARKit demo game, I want it to be more of a complete game.
Conclusion
I just want to repeat, I’ve only played the single-player and I will update my review if necessary if the multiplayer will change my opinion about the game which I believe it will, but I need to wait and see.
Sing AR Fight is an adorable and simple game for all ages. It features original and addictive gameplay, original music, excellent “rhythm” for a casual game, gorgeous visuals and character design—it nails most of the things right.
I’ve mentioned that as a single-player game only it’s not too attractive. It’s a game that you are going to play for a day and just move on to the next. Hopefully, the developer has some attractive plans for the game and we get to see them very soon.
I’ll be visiting the game again once the multiplayer is out and I’ll update my review again. The game isn’t free. I do recommend waiting for the multiplayer to come out and then download it and it might be already out by the time you read these lines It’s an excellent game and I personally glad that I bought it, can’t wait for the upcoming updates.