I’ve been waiting for ARcade Plane to come out when I first heard about it on Twitter. I love playing games with planes so I’ve shown interest in it from the get-go. In this review, we’ll take a close look at this new indie augmented reality arcade game
What is ARcade Plane?
ARcade Plane is what the developer calls it, an AR Endless Funny Flying. In this game, you control a small airplane which you need to maneuver around a city block as you avoid obstacles and collect start to help you expand your city and unlock new types of aircrafts.
The game was designed with a simple one-touch gameplay. The plane will circulate around the city and all the play needs to do is to tap and hold on the screen to make the plane dive down and release to make it dive back up to its default elevation point.
There are rocks positioned around the city. The stars are located on the surface and in order to collect them, you’ll need to descent by tapping and holding on the screen and then quickly release it so the plane won’t crash into the next rock. The game is all about timing and hand-eye coordination.
The goal of the game is to try to collect a certain amount of stars in each round in order to move to the next level. If you fail once, you have the option to either pay 30 stars to try again and keep your progression. You can also watch an advert if you don’t have the right amount of stars.
The game remembers your game progression. When you get back to the game, you don’t start from level 1, but from the last level that you’ve played. I like this decision. I don’t like playing endless games where you need to start from level 1 each time you fail. like in ARZombi. Sometimes I just lose interest in trying to get to the same level all over again, especially when it can take a lot of time. I’ve spent an hour and a half to get to over level 30, and I will definitely wouldn’t even think about trying to break my level record by starting from level 1.
The game has a time limit based on the amount of fuel the plane has, so you just can’t take your time and fly forever. The good news is that the stars will fuel up your tank so you can fly longer.
The city isn’t there for just beauty. The main goal of the game is to also expand your city. Buying new airplanes and progressing through the levels will make your city grow and you can actually see the city getting larger and larger as you progress.
The is also a nice a “collecting income” mode where you need to quickly tap on the yellow stars to collect as many of them as possible before the time runs out. The maximum that I’ve got was 79 stars. You can get those stars really fast and it’s equivalent to collecting stars of around 15 minutes of actual gameplay.
The game allows you to play previous levels (available through the menu), it features achievements and a global leaderboard (best level and biggest city).
Addictive Gameplay
I’ve played quite a few AR games that follow this gameplay practice and most of them were very addictive. For example, AR Flip Knife was one of those games.
The gameplay itself is very repetitive. The game has increased difficulty which is reflected in the map design which requires more precise timing when you descend or ascent the aircraft. The game is quite challenging, but far less difficulty than games like Flappy Bird. If you are searching for a very difficult game like Flappy Bird, this isn’t the right game for you. In fact, after playing a few minutes with it, I’ve already got into the gameplay rhythm and was able to finish the level relatively easily. Of course, I failed from the time time, because it’s hard to hold that accuracy for a long period of time. Furthermore, the higher the level, the higher the number of stars you need to collect, which makes it even harder to complete a level.
A part of was very disappointed because I was expecting more interesting and dynamic interactions not just diving to collect stars. That being said, once I start playing, I just couldn’t stop, this game is very addicting.
It doesn’t mean that there aren’t things that can be improved. The developer really needs to add more dynamics to the game, just a static hot water balloon isn’t enough. I’ve reached level 34 and it’s just the same thing with different shaped rocks and that red balloon popping out from time to time.
Adding various types of obstacles can make the game more interesting to play and feel less repetitive. For example, I would add an airplane flying in the other direction that also flies up and down which you need to avoid. The game becomes quite boring after a short period of time. When I launch a new level I just have nothing new to look up for. The city development part and the airplane selection aren’t enough to keep me interested in progressing in the game. Don’t compare it to Flappy Bird, because what made people get so addicted to it is its extreme difficulty, this game isn’t like that at all.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the smooth maneuverability controls and the gameplay mechanics feels really good and this is probably one of the highlights of the game and what makes this game fun and addictive, but the question is for how long?
Just one last thing, just so you know, it doesn’t matter which plane you buy, they all have the same speed and physics.
ARcade Plane AR Experience
The game doesn’t give you the option to resize the gameplay area. It spawns the level of the size that matches the gameplay area but has a minimum and maximum size.
It’s an Augmented Reality (AR) game that you can play in almost any place. I’ve played it on my bed, on a small table in the living room and on the floor without any problems.
The level design is really nice and I like the colorful color palette that makes the gameplay experience feel cheerful and lively. Same goes for the UI which looks simplistic and matches the overall design of the game.
The game also features some nice background music, sound effects and visual effects that also help to create a compelling and engaging gameplay experience.
By the way, the first plane has some nice smoke trailing effect, I have no idea why the other planes don’t have something similar?
Conclusion
My overall impressions of ARcade Plane are positive as you can clearly tell. Putting my personal expectations aside, the game was really fun to play. I still think that the developer should add more unique obstacles in each level to make it the game less predictable, repetitive and more diverse.
Having said that, the gameplay mechanics work really well, the game feels good in AR due to the use of elevation as part of the gameplay mechanics. I like the progression system which includes achievements, city expansion, and the unlockable airplanes option It might sound obvious, but some developers don’t even bother with that.
If you are searching for a little fun and addictive AR game, ARcade Plane can definitely answer that need and it’s free to play—Recommended.