Looking back at the whole week, I have to say that it was an exciting week. I’ve reviewed a lot of ARKit games and app, some of them were really impressive, others much less.
Reviewing all those games and knowing what other apps are there gave me an understanding of what works well for AR and what not and I want to clarify that statement and talk about a specific subject related to ARKit games and play area size adaptation in games, where I have found some issues while playing certain games. Now, because I haven’t tried other AR platforms/technologies, My article only refers to my experience with ARKit apps and games that I have used previously.
Not every app can work well for AR. For example, in VR you don’t have the constraint of space. I am not talking about room-scale games that do pose limitations, but the option to position 3D objects in the 3D scene. In AR you are very limited and developers need to carefully consider the constraint of the pace in which users are going to use their apps or games.
I’ve seen games like Alice in wonderland AR quest that were able to use portal doors with a completely 3D scene to allow users to enjoy being present in a large 3D space, although the game is played in a very limited space. That was certainly an exception and an original game design that worked really well.
A game like ARZombi which is still pending review requires a relatively large space. It was playable in the living room, but the gameplay experience wasn’t great at all. I took the game downstairs to a larger area which has a longer space, but I still find it very inconvenient to play the game.
I’ve played the game AR Bowling Game and it was a bad experience. What the developer did is trying to bring an authentic bowling experience to AR. The problem was that he tried to use a long surface for the ball to run on, but most people play it in a relatively small space. So what happens is that you resize a very long level, so the bowling surface now looks like a long thin wooden stick and the bowling pieces look so small like dust particles. Maybe if I played that game outdoors in full scale I would enjoy it. Would I go outside to find a very large area just to be able to play the game? of course not.
Maby ARKit games allow you to resize the level or the characters, and this is very important for many apps. It worked wonderfully for AR Pool Billiards, AMON, Gun of Boom AR spectator Mode and many other apps and games. Some games however like AR Football Reality Soccer didn’t offer that. This means that if a user had a limited space, he wouldn’t be able to play those games at all.
Now, there is nothing in the game that tells you what’s the minimum size needed to use a certain app. You can download or even buy an ARKit app and find about those constraints later on. For Room-scale VR games you have that. You can check out Steam and you can see that developers are sharing the minimum required area size needed to play a game. Maybe it’s not a huge deal with mobile games because in the worst case scenario you just spend a few dollars, but for VR it’s more problematic because you can spend much more and just find out that you can’t play the game due to a playable area limitation.
Some games like powARdup adapt well to the size of the playable area. Other games like Crazy Monsters use verticality in order to make sure the game is playable in as many places as possible so it accessible for a large audience.
This means that there are many ARKit apps out there that just didn’t design to adapt well to the available constraints that this technology has. What happens is that a user starts a game or an app, and just see a warning message that the app can’t find a surface to place the level on. So what you do is continuously move around trying to find a spot to play, not knowing that you probably have no way to play a game that you’ve just paid for.
I’ve seen some apps that just let you spawn the level no matter what search for surfaces afterward.
It kind of reminds me the responsive design for web pages. When you are designing a game, you either try to go to a minimum size that you expect many people to be able to use your app on or design the game to adapt to the different size of places users are using the app. The “Resize” feature is very popular because of that.
When I come to think about it, I never played a game that I could resize its level. When I play a game on my computer or on the PS4 I just play the game.
All that makes a lot of sense after you see all the ARKit apps that people developer. Virtual pet games like Miaow, AR Dragon and Follow Me Dragon adapt well to any space, aside from being really fun to play in AR. Same goes to puzzle games like PuzzleAR, AMON and Splitter Critters—all work amazingly well in AR because of the ability to resize the level or use a limited space without hurting the gameplay experience.
All that doesn’t mean that we won’t see a great bowling game in augmented reality or enjoy all those other types of apps that just didn’t translate well to AR based on my experience. This just means that developer will need to create experiences that are designed from the ground up to adapt to the limitations of this medium and be able to deliver a great user experience and try to reach a broader audience as possible. Both the user and the developer will benefit from it.
I have friends who want to be able to play AR game in their room and not need to go to the living room or outside just to be able to play the game. It should be not less convenient to play than a regular game. This is good in theory, but in practice, AR games are designed to work on surfaces and take advantage of the position of the player in the physical space. AR technology enabled new types of experiences that weren’t possible before this technology was available. I’m sure that in time, developers will adapt better to those limitations. Just keep in mind that some games and apps were just designed for larger spaces (I know, I wish they have stated it in the game’s description itself).
I do hope to see a larger variety of game genres finding their way to Augmented Reality.
I want to hear what do you think of all that. Thanks for reading.