Having a blast: Immersive Augmented Reality Fun On-the-Go with ARBlast

ARBlast is a new augmented reality game on the app store. It is very fun to play, and can be played anywhere. It costs 99 cents, and can be found on the Apple App Store.

How It Works

The game links digital graphics to the player’s 3D environment. There are four phases to the game, and each phase has five levels. The first three phases are training phases for the last phase. The difficulty scales smoothly from level to level, and the game is pretty addictive.

I found myself pressing “play again” more than I should have, due to the quick nature of  the game. On each level, a player is given limited projectiles and limited time to shoot down all the targets, which start off in a compressed cube and spread throughout your 3D environment after the first projectile hits it.

Specs

Thanks to Apple’s ARKit, many AR games are arriving on the app store. ARBlast is one of the most interactive games to make it to the app store, and its second phase is in development. The game runs at 60fps on all iPhones, and iPads with iOS 11.2 and up. The sounds are high quality stereo and best heard via headset, and are a mixture of 44k and 48k sample rate.

Why AR?

One of the interesting aspects of gameplay is that since this is an augmented reality game, players have the option to walk through the array of cubes or to shoot from beyond the main mass. This said, players must move if they want to survive, because the targets shoot back! When hit, it produces a mixture of vibration, sound, flash, and voice. Each time the player is hit, they lose five seconds off their timer.

The AR factor of this game makes it uniquely immersive, and enables players to engage physically with the game in ways that are impossible for most other standard game applications. The nature of the game connects you with your surroundings without engulfing you in a totally virtual world. Developer Scott Gruber says the next phase will include dynamic twists that will make the game even more fun.

The “Augmented Reality Game” section of the app store is sure to experience explosive in the near future. Keep your eyes peeled for new ways to interact with the world around you through games made possible by AR technology!