A few days ago I reviewed a paper toss AR game called Toss-AR. this was probably one of the worst paper toss games that I played in my entire life. This thing is that I really like playing that type of game. Today I went to the App Store to search for a good alternative, and luckily I came across one, this ARKit game is called Paper Bin AR.
Well, as you can probably imagine, this AR game follows the same principle. You hold a paper ball in your hand which you need to throw into a bucket. This is an augmented reality (AR) game, therefore you can play it wherever you like, at home, in the office, even on the bus.
Realistic Physics
Paper Bin AR has some really cool features, but let’s first talk about the physics. The physics, unlike Toss-AR, feel very realistic. in Toss-AR it felt like you are throwing an object that decided which gravity low it want to obey and it changes his mind every time. In Paper Bin AR the physics work flawlessly and every throw felt right. Even when the paper ball touches the edges of the basket then it can stay on it or fall to either side entirely based on physics.
This feature alone makes Paper Bin AR better than Toss-AR.
How to Play Paper Bin AR?
When you start the game you’ll need to position the paper bin anywhere in your space. After the bin is in place you can start playing. Now, there are several difficulties to the game that are based on the distance of the player from the bin. The further away you are from the bin the higher the level (4 difficulty modes). The game draws the difficulty arc lines that tells you which difficulty area you are in and you can see that as text at the bottom of the screen.
You need to use a swipe gesture to toss the paper ball. The distance depends on the length of the swipe and the direction on the direction of the swipe relative to the basket.
The game has some nice sound effects. When you put the paper in the crowd cheers and when you miss the crowd shows his disappointment.
Global Leaderboard
At the bottom of the screen, there is a global leaderboard. You can see your position on the global leaderboard for today and your standing in your country as for the day you are playing. I guess the game resets the score every day.
One thing that I’ve noticed is that the global leaderboard doesn’t change when I change the difficulty (my position), it just stays the same and it should. It would be nice to have high score board for each difficulty.
When you move further or close and the difficulty changes, the score resets as well, so just watch out from that if you already got some good shots. Stay in the same area until you fail and then change your location to try a harder or easier difficulty.
There are also achievements based on the total score. It’s very easy to do in the “Very Easy” distance when you positioned the bin very close to you.
Other Features
Paper Bin AR also has a nice option to clear the papers if they stack up too much, but this will cost you 10 coins. You can also take a screenshot with the camera button and that will cost you 50 coins. The game does have microtransaction. You can buy coins for real money. The reason people will want to buy coins is to be able to clear the bin so the paper won’t overflow. If the bin is full you won’t be able to put more paper balls inside the bin. There is also an option to buy different types of baskets (e.g. Big Echo Bin) or ones in different colors.
For some reason, the game didn’t connect to Apple game center and I wasn’t able to see my score there, although there is a big clickable bottom at the bottom of the “Best Scores” page. Probably a bug that needs to be fixed or a feature not yet implemented.
Conclusion
Paper Bin AR is the best paper-toss ARKit game I’ve played to date (only tried two). The game is missing one very important feature and it’s wind. It would be nice having wind feature to make the game more fun and challenging.
I was nice playing a paper-toss game that actually works well in augmented reality. I really wanted to play one. The game is easy to learn and will challenge you once you decide to back off a bit and try to score from further away.
I think the developer should add some arcade-style features to make the game more interesting and challenging. He already nailed the foundations right, so now it’s time for some more interesting feature.
It’s a really nice ARKit game to pass some time. Having said that, it really felt that something was missing and it became boring after a short time. I think that adding a fan into the mix like in the original iOS “Paper Toss” game (by Backflip Studios) can have a big impact. Also, don’t make it so easy to break the world record. I could just put the basket very close to my body and just score thousands of points like that. Well, if the leaderboard was difficulty based it wasn’t a problem, but from what I could see, it isn’t.
Overall, a fun casual iOS AR game—recommended.