Hide the Hubu AR is a hide-and-go-seek iOS ARKit game for two players. The first player needs to hide a funny looking 3D bird called Hubu and the other player, the seeker, has 45 seconds to find it.
The seeker will see hot and cold guides to help him locate where the Hubu is located. You can’t see the Hubu but once you are close to it it will be revealed.
I’ve played various AR hide and seek a type of a game, including AR Hide and Seek Virtual City, AR Hide & Seek Games for Kids, but Hide the Hubu AR is very similar to a game called ARrrrrgh (what a terrible name for a game).
In ARrrrrgh you need to hide a treasure chest underneath the floor and let the other player dine it. The main difference between the two is that in ARrrrrgh you have a tracking map at the top of the screen that indicates how close the seeker is to the treasure and the seeker needs to tap on the floor to reveal the chest. In “Hide the Hubu”, the player has the Hot and Cold hints and it doesn’t need to click on anything, just be close to the hidden objects.
Second, in ARrrrrgh you have that really nice animation of digging and a hole is revealed in the floor showing where the chest is revealed.
I personally liked the ARrrrrgh version because of the nice animations, but the Hubu character does look really cute and funny. ARrrrrgh also has nice background music, while Hide the Hubu has a ticking sound effect that increases in tempo as you get closer to the hidden object.
So the game idea isn’t original and what makes this game really stand out is its vibrant colors that are used to promote the game. It just makes the game stand out and this what grabbed my attention of the game in the first place. So there is something beneficial using those bright and vibrant colors.
The gameplay itself is very simple and it definitely seemed to be developed for kids. I actually wanted to test out how well this game works in different situations. For example, I put the Hubu in the second floor, went down to the floor and wanted to see if the game will still be able to detect the original location of the object—it did. I also tried to place the object in a place much farther away from me, and it works well as well.
So the thing is that because ARKit is very precise in remembering the location of the object, you can use it to put the Hubu in different areas that will make it harder to the seeker to find it, like on a couch, behind a wall, in the first floor of the house, etc.
I personally think that the Hubu design is pretty bad, but I have to admit that I laughed when I saw it moving and flapping his wings, so I can forgive the ugly 3D model made of simple primitive shapes and bad matching colors because it actually turned out quite well 🙂
Conclusion
Hide the Hubu AR is a fun little ARKit game that will be favored by kids. If you have kids, just make sure they are playing in a safe place and they are aware of the environment because you can easily bump into something and fall if you don’t pay attention to the environment. It’s a fun party game to give kids to play when friends are coming over. Overall, fun game, I like the “Hot” and “Cold” guiding features and the fact that there is a time limit and you can actually fail as a seeker if you don’t find the Hubu in time. There are some nice looking hot and cold color visual effects but overall the presentation was less exciting compared to ARrrrrgh.
Overall, not a great game, but a fun casual local multiplayer game that kids will definitely enjoy playing.
Download the game from the App Store here.