Squishy Hoops is one of those one-touch-control games that are very easy to learn but extremely hard to master. If you’ve played a game called Flappy Bird, this game carries the same game design principal when it comes to gameplay and difficulty.
Squishy Hoops belongs to a game’s subcategory of very hard games like Fit In, Leap: Endless Run, and AR Runner.
Before we move on talking about this game in-depth, let’s take a look at some gameplay.
Squishy Hoops Gameplay
In the popular mobile game Flappy Bird, all you need to do is to tap the screen to make the bird stay in the air. The bird will automatically pull down by gravity and therefore the player needs to continuously tap the screen to make it float in the air. However, there are obstacles which you need to avoid as well, and this requires very precise control of the bird’s height because once you bash into a wall it’s game over. The higher you progress, the higher the score.
Squishy Hoops is very similar to Flappy Bird, the bird still obeys the law of physics and it’s continuously being pulled down by gravity and you control its vertical positioning by continuously tapping on the screen. Instead of obstacles, you have hoops the continuously expand and shrink. You have to guide the bird through the hoops so it won’t get crushed by one.
There are also various egg and star items positioned along the vertical axis which you need to collect. The eggs give you extra points and the stars are used to unlock different characters.
There is even an option to combo by quickly collecting several eggs at the same time, which then rewards you by doubling the score of all the amount of eggs you’ve collected during the combo session.
The player can also unlock 10 more different winged characters using the stars he collected during the game.
An AR Game You Can Play Everywhere
The great thing about this ARKit game is that you can literally play it everywhere you want because of its designed. It takes a very little amount of surface area to deploy the game and you can even resize it if it’s too large. I’ve played it on the table of the living room, on the window’s porch, and even on the bed before going to sleep.
There are many AR games that make use of the vertical space to make the game’s footprint smaller so people can play it almost everywhere without any restrictions. This helps improves the usability and therefore attracts more installations. It’s actually the opposite of what W.AR Augmented Reality is, which is a large-scale life-size AR game, a game that most people won’t be able to play as the developer intended it, because of the play area size requirements and the lack of adaptation for smaller gameplay areas. It’s more similar in this way to games like Let’s Stack AR and Stack AR, and I am not surprised why there have become so popular, aside from being very addictive games.
There is also achievements and a global leaderboard, which is a must for this type of game.
Game’s Graphics & Sound Effects
The graphics are not the strong aspect of the game. There are literally just a set of colorful hoops dynamically shrinking and expanding, nothing more.
That being said, I like the nice colorful gradient color choice and the cute character design.
Same goes for the sound effects, nothing special to write home about, yet still a solid choice of cheering and cute character sound effects that just make the game more enjoyable to play.
Repetitious Gameplay and Not in a Good Way
Squishy Hoops is a very difficult game, it’s so hard to you are going to find yourself failing after 2 seconds and asking yourself what just happened. The game requires full concentration, fast reaction time and adaptation. There is just no time to think too much in this game. After some time you get the hang of it and it becomes more like a dance, but still, I want to see if you are able to pass the 20 point mark.
I’m sure there are many people who will find this its relentlessly repetitious gameplay to be annoying as hell. It’s definitely not a game for everyone and I’m sure some people will get bored of it after a few minutes. As I said, it’s not for everyone. You don’t know if it’s for you until you get to try it out.
I also find this game to be very addicting similar to AR Flip Knife, Let’s Stack AR and Kickerinho World. Once you start playing it, it’s very hard to stop, at least that how it felt for me.
Squishy Hoops maybe be a good Augmented Reality game for those searching for casual yet extremely difficult iOS mobile games. If you love those type of games I also recommend checking our AR Robot Runner, Leap Endless Run and Fit In. Still, I think that Squishy Hoops is harder to master than all those games. The good news is that there isn’t a delay between each session if you fail you can quickly start a new game, so doesn’t become too frustrating starting a new session.
Conclusion
It’s a game that is hard to score. It lacks many of the things that I love about games in general. After playing it I asked my self what did I even bother. It’s a very shallow free-time-waster game that can cause more frustration than enjoyment. I actually felt nothing being able to pass my previous score, it didn’t feel rewarding at all, nor I cared about those unlockable characters that add nothing interesting to the game and takes forever to unlock. Having said all that, I can still see this game becoming very popular because of its challanging and addictive gameplay nature.
I love playing challanging games, but because this game is so difficult, it doesn’t flow well, because you find yourself failing almost every few seconds. Take the game Fit In for example. it’s not as difficult as this game, but at least I could play it for a few minutes straight and it didn’t feel frustrating as Squishy Hoops.
I can only recommend this iOS ARKit app for anyone who is obsessed with these type of Flappy Bird-like challanging games and love their competitive nature, otherwise, you probably should stay away from it.