AR Car Crash is a simple and addictive traffic-control game in augmented reality. The goal of the game is to try to collect coins on the road while trying to avoid crashing into the other cars that drive on the same road.
Gameplay
Your car automatically drives in circles, but you have an option to accelerate or decelerate the speed of the car. The circular road you drive on intersects with a second circular road (easy mode) or both a circular and a straight road in the hard mode.
This game is all about monitoring the other car’s location and those which keep spawning and make sure your car is safe.
This is a cheap alternative version of Conduct AR!. In Conduct AR you need to switch lanes and avoid colliding against other trains while bringing passengers to their designated stations based on color. This game belongs to those type of simple and difficult games that are easy to learn but hard to master. Don’t worry though, it’s nothing like Squishy Hoopes-like difficulty. It’s still challenging and requires fast thinking and adaptability but you can easily play a session of a few minutes, unlike Squishy Hoops that my average was like 5 seconds, even less.
Visuals
AR Car Crash has very uninspiring visuals. I really disliked the opaque color rectangular based the game, it just makes the game look really cheap and would look better without it.
Furthermore, the road is just flat on the surface. It would look so much better with an elevation, making like a hill in the middle and let the road cross it. Also, the other structures surrounding the road look unrelated and looked like they have been positioned just to feel in the level with something so it won’t look empty.
Overall, very uninteresting design, which is kind of petty considering that with a bit of creativity this game could look much better, it’s not a complex game.
Fun Factor
AR Car Crash is a casual arcade game which is all about getting the highest score, earn money and use it to unlock new cars.
I actually liked the gameplay mechanics. As I mentioned, it’s quite similar to Conduct AR! and I actually liked that type of traffic-control gameplay mechanics in games. I also have to admit that there is something quite satisfying playing this traffic-control game in such a simple straightforward manner. Like if you are developing a casual AR game, go casual all the way and make the game accessible to anyone.
I enjoyed playing it and it was indeed very challenging. It actually didn’t frustrate me as some of those “Impossibly-hard games” because I felt that I had more control over my achievements in the game, and the game didn’t put me in a position where I need to totally concentrate in the game and look like a hypnotized person in order to get to feel a sense of achievement..
It’s nice having two difficulty modes (easy and hard) but other than this, the game doesn’t have anything else interesting to offer. There is a global leaderboard which is great. I think a global leaderboard for this type of game is essential. I mean, I put time trying to improve my score, I want to not just see how good I am compared to others, I want to trump the global leaderboard.
In terms of AR experience, this game was quite bad. The reason for that is that the game board is quite larger and it has this big opaque color background that wraps the entire gameplay area. When I played the game, I aimed the iPad’s camera towards the game’s area, all I saw is just that game, not the surrounding area. In that sense, it didn’t even feel like an AR game. The main reasons for this were obviously the opaque ground background color and the flat level design. I am not talking about the 3D decoration structures, but the game area itself, where my eye is focused on.
Overall, fun gameplay mechanics but bad level design definitely takes the fun of playing this game in AR.
Conclusion
AR Car Crash is a fun and challenging casual game. If you like traffic-control games, I am positive that you’ll enjoy playing this game as well. Having said that, the game falls short in terms of presentation. It’s among those games that you probably prefer playing regularly not in AR. As much as I dislike games like Squishy Hoops, at least that game looks attractive in AR. The game plays straight in front of the game, so the user can enjoy the mixed-reality experience, whether, in AR Car Crash, the game feels like a standard game, although it plays in augmented reality (AR).
AR Car Crash is free in the App Store. It’s kind of fun casual game to just kill time. It’s good for those who don’t have a lot of time to play and are searching for a casual game that plays in short session. I would say, if you like the gameplay idea, download it, other than that, you can easily skip it all together, you won’t miss anything great, that I can tell.
Download AR Car Crash from the App Store here.