In this post, I’ll be reviewing an ARKit archery game called ARchery. I’ve played Version 1.0 of the game. By the way, I like when developer emphasizing the “AR” part (aka Augmented Reality), and I find amusing how many times in games it actually works that naming letter capitalization convention. Anyways, back to our little game ARchery.
When I came across ARchery today, I immediately thought that it’s an amazing idea to bring this real-life bow and arrow archery game as an augmented reality simulation game.
I’ve got even more excited about the game after reading the official description of the app on the app store, For example, the game boasts realistic physics and a realistic feeling of pulling the bowstring by pulling your device towards you. The developer also mentioned ultra-realistic graphics and auto-scaling difficulty—all sounds really nice—on paper.
My Gameplay Experience with ARchery
I first tested ARchery app outdoors and then moved indoors indoors. The game asks you to place a target. It’s very easy to place a target. You can place is on the floor or even in the air. I recommend putting at a shoulder height because once you start nailing some shots the target will start moving in different directions and it’s easier to shoot it when it’s at that height. Once you pin the target in place you obtain the bow and arrow and you can start playing.
There is a short tutorial that explains things but the gameplay mechanics are very simple. You touch and hold the screen to pull the bowstring back and increase the power of the sho. You release touch to release the arrow—Simple.
All idea behind the bowstring pulling mechanics is very smart and I really like it. Having said, in practice, it felt like a big mass. Pulling the bowstring as not the problem. The problem is that the aiming is really unintuitive.
Once you touch the screen, you can rotate around a pivot point to change your position relative to the bow. The problem is that the default position of the bow is on the right side. If it was at the front I could easily aim by aligning my view with the arrow. I did try it, but instead of the bow going straight, it went like 70 degrees to the left.
The aiming felt disconnected with my physical movement and how I use to aim a real bow in real life. I needed to just learn to know what position and rotation the bow should be and to memorize it to know which direction the arrow would travel to.
The problem I think is that the bow is fixed in position at a certain point along the X-axis. When you move the iPad left, the bow didn’t move to the middle but just rotated on the Y-axis left.
This just translates to a very annoying and frustrating gameplay experience. Of course, after some time I was able to adapt but it felt just terribly wrong. I first thought that maybe I am doing something wrong, maybe I just don’t know how to play. I tried to blame myself first. I gave it to my friend to try out, same frustrating results. Maybe it’s like that on the iPad and not the iPhone, but I doubt it.
What I did like is the automatic scaling of the difficulty in the game. You first start with a static target, then after you nail some shot it starts moving left and right after more shots it starts doing circular movements around the X-Axis (horizontally) and so on. I really liked that part of the game.
ARchery AR EXperience, Sounds and Graphics
Saying ultra-realistic graphics in the game’s description is very misleading. The developer referred to the camera stream, not to the geometry and rendering of the 3D models of the game. Not everyone spends time reading everything in the description, some just going over the titles and for me it was very misleading.
Regarding the 3D models in the game, they are very simplistic. I personally prefer more realistic visuals for this type of game, but this is just my own personal preference, nothing wrong using low-poly 3D models.
There is also a square in the middle of the bow right in front of the arrow. I have no idea what it was doing there. When I shoot it disappears after I release shot. Maybe, in reality, they have something at the front, but it looks weird for a casual gamer like me.
There is no music and the game also has not sound effects—why?! The target doesn’t look circular around the edges. I don’t think it would put a lot of stress on the GPU using a higher polygon count for the target 3D model.
Another thing that I didn’t like is that after the score resets, the arrows still stay stuck on the target. When the score reset, it will be better to just clear the arrows so players can start a fresh run.
Regarding the AR experience, it wasn’t bad. I was able to spawn the target very quickly in a single tap in the screen and start playing. It’s nice being able to shoot arrows in AR and if it wasn’t for the awkward gameplay mechanics, I would probably enjoy playing it.
I also don’t like the simple textual UI. Even the back arrow is just a “Smaller than” ASCII character that you can do yourself on the keyboard.
Conclusion
I bought the game and had high expectations. I really want to be able to enjoy playing archery in augmented reality. I still wait for an augmented reality darts game (if you hear this devs, please make one, it can be really awesome!).
At the end of the day, ARchery came as a big disappointment. I didn’t have fun with the game at all. All was left is just frustration and disappointment because this could have been such a better game if the gameplay mechanics were nailed right. I can forgive all the other things that can be polished later, but the gameplay mechanics just felt so synthetic, unintuitive and frustrating—I wouldn’t recommend this game at this specific point.