Let’s Stack AR! is a block stacking game similar to the very popular Stack AR game. I’ve also tried playing two other Stack AR like games but they were not so good. What drew my attention to this game is that this game was developed by a 10-year-old coder from Australia Yuma Soerianto. In fact, he was the youngest iOS developer at Apple WWDC17 and a speaker at the World Youth Forum 2017 in Egypt. He appears in videos and articles in many popular news websites and has its own website at madebyyuma.com.
Tim Cook even mentioned Yuma Soerianto in WWDC17, you can check it out here. As you can hear from Tim Cook, Yuma already has 6 apps on the apps store, unbelievable, and this guy is only 10 years old!
I also remembered reading an article about Yuma Soerianto meeting Apple’s CEO Tim Cook face to face and he certainly impressed Cook with his coding skills. The boy starts learning to code when he was just 6 years old, so just imagine what he can do next.
I was interviewing Yuma Soerianto, the youngest developer at #WWDC17 – when this dude interrupted. pic.twitter.com/27B3EXPoEW
— Peter Wells (@peterwells) June 4, 2017
So this is the story behind this little app. I’ve played Stack AR and really enjoyed it, it was casual, fun and challenging. In fact, Stack AR was the first ARKit game to top Apple App Store’s free-to-play games category (via).
So I knew I’ve already played a similar game, but what Yuma Soerianto added his own nice touch to the game and this review we’ll take a close look at his new game called Let’s Stack AR!.
Just so you know, the game is listed under the company name Hendri Soerianto Production; Hendri Soerianto is his father’s name.
It’s amazing to see a generation of such young developers. Just imagine what they will be able to achieve if they start learning to code at such a young age?
What is Let’s Stack AR!
Right off the bat, I really liked the title of the game, quite engaging and more inviting compared to just Stack AR, even the icon is colorful and cheerful.
In Let’s Stack AR! the player needs to help a young duck build the tallest tower by stacking up colorful blocks one on top of the other. As simple as it sounds, you will find that this isn’t an easy game at all. The ideal move is to try to stack the block so it perfectly positioned on top of the previous block. Each next moving block will carry the same size as previously positioned one. It’s all about timing, the block will move on the X-axis and the player needs to tap the screen so it stops exactly on top of the fixed block that was previously placed. If you match the location perfectly, you gain 2 points, if the placement isn’t perfect but still touches the previous block you gain 1 point. If the block misses the previous block it’s game over.
Game’s Difficulty
There is a trick though. If the block doesn’t cover the previous block perfectly, the part that doesn’t overlay the fixed block will be vertically cut of the original block, making it smaller in size. The next block that comes out will now have the same area size. This means that if you continue aligning the block in an imperfect position, your blocks will continue to decrease in size until it becomes too difficult to correctly align them together.
It’s a very challanging game. and I was quite ashamed to see how bad I performed compared to others when I opened the global leaderboard. This game is all about timing and it takes a lot of time until you get into the rhythm of the game and able to nail those perfect alignments one after the other. It happened to me several times that I was able to make a perfect match, but it’s very hard to repeat it for a long time. You don’t have any time limit, so you can take your time. The duck with his spaceship will move the block from side to side and you can wait until you feel this is the right time to tap and align the block. I found that sometimes I do better when just waiting for the block to make its first pass instead of trying to rush it and make it drop in the first run.
AR Experience
Let’s Stack AR! can be played anywhere. The game quickly deploys the game on any surface and it takes a very small space. Once the game starts you have the option to choose the exact location on the surface.
I’ve played the game on the couch, on the bed, and even on the window’s porch without a problem. Although the blocks stack up, it takes the bottom blocks as you continue to stack them up the blocks so the tower doesn’t stack up high too much. When you fail, you can actually see the entire blocks in real size.
What Makes Let’s Stack AR! Unique?
Stack AR is already an amazing ARKit game featuring colorful textured blocks, the ability to lock more type of blocks as you play.and it’s similar to Let’s Stack AR!.
That being said, I did enjoy playing Yuma’s version better for several reasons: first of all, it looks more engaging and fun because of the little duck in a spaceship character that flies above the stacks. It’s more interesting than just looking at colorful blocks.
Second, The search-for-surface initialization is much more user-friendly with an image of the duck instead of a boring rectangular border.
Stack AR doesn’t have background music, whether Yuma’s game does and it’s a fun and cheerful music. Another thing that I liked is that there is kind of an associated “snap” animation and sound effects that make it feel good when you put the block in place. The duck’s ship is moving up and there are some nice particle effects that make you enjoy snapping those blocks onto place every single time.
Second, at the bottom of the tower, there is a really nice colorful animated puddle that changes colors as you stack up more blocks.
However, my favorite feature is that as you stack up blocks, the game shows you what objects or animals your tower is taller than. Here are a few examples:
“Your tower is taller than a kangaroo” (the developer is Australian, so I knew we are going to have a kangaroo is an example)
“Your tower is taller than an NBA player”
At the end of the round, after you fail (Everyone fails at a certain point) you get to see how tall your tower is in meters, see your current score and your highscore and there is even a bottom that lets you take a photo of your tower with the score and everything.
Those extra features really made Let’s Stack AR! feel more engaging, fun and interesting to play.
I think you’ll enjoy playing this game even more in an outdoor location, so you can see how the final tower size is compared to tall buildings in the area. I’ve seen some of those photos in the game’s official page on the App Store and it looks really cool.
Conclusion
Although the game has a very nice story behind it, we need to look at the game as it is. Let’s Stack AR turns out as a really great surprise. I’ve already played a few similar games, but Let’s Stack AR! was able to top them by adding more personality, music, lovely animations and even a gentle touch of educational value to make it stand out from the rest.
The visuals and music will certainly make the game beloved by kids but it’s certainly a game that will challenge anyone of you, no matter which age you are. It’s an amazing casual game that is fun to play in your spare time. You can play it anywhere you go and it has almost no restrictions at all, just take your iPhone or iPad and start playing wherever you are. I still need to progress up the global leaderboard and I intend to do it right after this review. Overall, a great ARKit game, Highly Recommended!
Download the game from iTunes here.