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games in the past for iOS, but it's usually just using your camera and then putting a bunch
of objects on the screen, not really having a great sense of where the floor or walls or other objects are. But now, we have AR games
where you can actually have whole maps built on tabletops, or have objects bursting out
of the ground in front of you.
So let's talk about the best AR games you can get right now for your iPhone. Now to kick things off I
want to start with a game that I think is an excellent introduction to AR gaming, and that's Amon. Amon is a very simple game
where all you're doing is using the AR camera to
summon pieces of a stone statue in front of you that
burst out of the ground, and then you have to look at them to make them complete from
the correct perspective. Now this starts off very, very simple, but a couple later the puzzles start to get a lot more complex because they'll start
throwing things in your way, like extra stone pieces you
don't have to make use of, or boards that get in the way
of making the image complete.
Now the reason I think this makes a great introduction to
AR gaming is two-fold. First off, there's not any
kind of real time limit or challenge to the game
other than just looking around and trying to find the right angle, so you can take your time,
get used to AR tracking, and really get used to how to manipulate and look at objects in an
augmented reality game. The second reason is
that you're going to look utterly insane playing this thing, so you're gonna have to get
comfortable with the fact that just like with any other AR game, if you play this, people are
gonna think you look crazy, and you need to be
comfortable with that fact. After Amon, there's another
game with a similar premise but it does gamify it a
lot more, and that's Keedo.
Now, Keedo is one of those games that it's already existed before and it messed with perspective
gameplay a little bit where you could just tilt
the screen to make platforms be lower or higher. But with the release
of iOS 11 they've added an AR level as well. And with this one we're
actually climbing a whole tower having to constantly move around, looking at different angles to make sure the character can cross safely. Now, given this is only a single level, they are hopefully patching more in time, but I really like this one
because this is a style of game that AR is messing with, there's
a couple different titles that have come out as well, like Arise which had the same basic premise but even though it's a single level Keedo actually feels
the most polished to me.
It actually is the best use of tracking and just feels like a very comfortable and great looking experience. Third up we have Euclidean Lands. Now just like with Keedo, this is a game that existed before already
and it was successful, fun little puzzle game that
has regular levels still but with the release of
iOS 11 you're gonna get special AR levels as well now. Now if you haven't played this game before imagine a mixture of the
art style and kinda puzzle elements of Monument Valley but mixed with a Rubik's cube where
you have this sort of floating little stone thing
where you can rotate it around and move the character
around to avoid enemy attacks and you have to get to
finishing goal point.
Honestly even without AR
this is just a fun game if you're a fan of puzzles. But with these new levels added, it's a great demonstration
of what you can do with AR puzzle games. Alright, enough of puzzle
and platform games, let's move on to some action titles starting with the game whose
title pretty clearly explains what it is right up front and that's Zombie Gunship of Revenant. Now the way this game makes use of AR.
Is actually pretty interesting because it doesn't just use
the basic camera outlook to where you can actually you
know see the room you're in, instead it applies this kind of black out night vision
effect to everything so it still looks very gamey
even though you can still occasionally make out like
you know, where a table or chair is in the background. The concept of the game
is very very simple, there's a base you need to protect, there are zombies swarming you and you need to shoot them
with your Zombie Gunship. This game can be played without AR. But I actually find that
it plays a lot better with AR activated.
Especially if you set
it up on like a table because it allows you to
move around and zoom in and you have a lot freedom moving, it just feels very natural
compared to the regular gameplay. Now not gonna lie, this is
one of those titles where advancement is somewhat
slow and they're definitely gonna try and gouge you
for it, "Hey you wanna just "buy real money so you
can do stuff faster? "You wanna buy real money
so you can do stuff faster? "You wanna buy real money
so you can do stuff faster?" But it's not that bad actually. If you just use it as an
occasional kinda pick up and play, sink a little
time here and there, it's very easy to unlock
a lot of different guns, upgrade stuff in a regular
fashion and just have fun with it every now and then. And we have the big
flagship title that Apple has been really pushing
as a representative of what AR gaming can become and that is The Machines.
Now on the surface level The Machines is a very straight forward
meat and potatoes RPS game. You have your army, you're moving around, you have hero unit that
have special powers and ultimately your goal is to blow up the enemy base. But what's really interesting about it is how it shows off how much more dynamic an AR map can be. A lot of other AR games currently make use of very flat lands or just
build a singular tower that you can walk around and look at whereas The Machines has much
more dynamically designed map where you can actually walk
around and really get a sense for the lay of the land and where you want your units to go.
You can look through little underpasses, you can check out which
area is higher than others to get a new vantage. It just gives you such a much
more interesting map layout that other AR games just aren't
really making use of yet. So there you have some
of the best AR games you can grab right now for your phone. Now are these the absolute
just best games in general that you could ever grab? No, AR is an emerging technology, controls aren't already gonna go
the way you want them to, things sometimes get a little fickle but they are a step in the right direction that is really showing us
where this technology can go and hopefully we're gonna
see some way better games in the near future..