Paper Toss was one of my favorite games when I purchase my first iPhone. It reminded me some days back then in the office where we were totally bored and this was the only way to have some fun between breaks. I thought that now in augmented reality, these objecting-tossing type of games can even more fun than before. I’ve searched the App Store and cam across Toss-AR, an augmented reality ball-throwing game.
The goal of the game is simple. You position a basket somewhere on a surface in your home, office or wherever you want to play the game. After the basket is in place, you need to use a forward swipe touch gesture to release a ball and try to put it in the basket.
For every time you get to score you get points. If you miss, the game resets the score and you start from the beginning. The game remembers your highest score.
Toss-AR is nothing like Paper Toss Boss. You have only a ball to throw. It’s certainly not fair to even start to compare the two but I have a reason why I bring it up. As a fan of that type of games, I want those games to be more arcade-like, dynamic, fun and challenging. How many times can you just enjoy throwing a ball into a basket at the same place until you get bored of it? whether in Paper Toss Boss you have like 16 unique items. Paper Toss Boss also has lots of dynamic environments, challenges and other interactions with items in the 3D scene.
What I like about games like Paper Toss Boss and others games like it is that you have a large selection of items to throw, dynamic environments, challenges and other unique interactions with items in the 3D scene. This what makes those object-tossing games so much fun to play. Without it, it just played like a regular hoop game and I reviewed a few of those in the past two weeks.
Now back to Toss-AR. Toss-AR is missing many features that could have made this title much better. There is no global leaderboard, no dynamic gameplay and the surface regions detected by ARKit remains on the floor for reasons unknown. In these games, I love to know what type of object I am throwing and I like to see an appropriate physics bind to it. Here the physics seems a bit tacky, but this is because I have no idea what type of ball is it, what it is made of. I like for example, having a metal or a paper ball and each one has its own physics so you need to adjust to the fall distance of each item.
Toss-AR ist just the most simplistic version of the classic game. Although nothing’s wrong with it being like that, the question is whether users will enjoy playing it after like 5 minutes. I had enough after 30 seconds, to be honest.
I actually prefer if play games like AR-Basketball or AR Sports Basketball instead.You still get to throw a ball, and you understand the physics related to the ball. In AR Sports Basketball the nailed the physics right and although the core gameplay isn’t different (you throw a ball into a basket), it was much more fun and immersive to play than Toss-AR. In AR Sports Basketball I can play different game modes as well or even against a friend locally.
I’ve also noticed that when you score, the score changes (why?!). I’ve scored from the same place, sometimes I get 1 sore, sometimes 2 and if I remember right here was one time that I didn’t get any score at all. You can see that in the gameplay video.
There is no music, and only a single sound effect when the ball intersects with the basket, and that sound effect really sounds so weak and not related to the game. At least make some sort of a cheerful sound effects when you are able to put the ball in, like the visual effects and sound effects that I get to enjoy when I put the ball in the basket in the game AR Sports Basketball. There I felt satisfaction the moment the ball was in, here it’s like: “Wow, you put a ball in the basket, Bravo, let’s move on”-kind of feeling.
Conclusion
All in all, Toss-AR Augmented Reality Game is the most basic ball-throwing ARKit game I came across. I am a big fan of the classic and my expectations were obviously high. There is certainly lots of work needed to be done to make the game more attractive.
I didn’t find any better straight alternative, other than playing one of those AR basketball games or beer bottle flipping games. Of course the developers can always improve the game and add more feature to make it more fun and engaging.
As of version 1.1, I do not recommend this game, but you can just download and try it yourself, it’s free after all.