With augmented/mobile reality, there has to be a combination of four different aspects. A good mobile application is available to everyone, has a great addiction to it, doesn’t require much to get started, and has a low price. Therefore, we will only be judging applications that can be found on both the iPhone and the Android. We will also only be judging Games that employ Fitness focused material. Now let’s get into it with the best in AR for this year’s VR Awards.
Qualifying Games:
Pokemon Go
Pokemon Go was an immediate success with society as kids and adults took to downloading the battery-crippling augmented reality game. After a lot of commercials that felt misleading after seeing the actual product, many still love to play the Pokemon game to try and catch them all.
Clandestined Anomaly
Clandestined is a relatively small game that only a few know about in comparison with Pokemon Go. In fact, the only reason why it was included into this list was because of a very nice special feature that was in the game that unlocked if you were close enough to the target. While it was a top down alien strategy game, if you were close enough to the attacking source you could go into a special sharp shooter mode to shoot the aliens on the ground yourself.
Hex3 AppTag Laser
Sadly, Father.IO couldn’t be here because it’s only available for the Google Play store and not iPhone, but leave it to NERF to try and take the idea. While we technically have to include this because it fits the parameters, it just feels wrong. It’s a laser tag accessory that allows you to play laser tag with others who have the same application.
Addictive Gameplay Winner: Pokemon Go
While Clandestined does have some great gameplay, being able to claim you made an entire country walk for a continuous year is hard to beat. In just a single month, America took 144 billion extra steps all on its little lonesome and solely because of Pokemon Go.
Starting Requirements Winner: Clandestined Anomaly
While both Pokemon Go and Clandestined Anomaly only need a phone to get started, Clandestined Anomaly ties with Pokemon Go by supporting 0.1 more version than Pokemon Go. Pokemon Go supports Android version 4.4 and up while Clandestined Anomaly Supports 4.3 and up. Meanwhile, on the iPhone it gets and even greater leap in difference as Pokemon Go needs OS 8.0 and Clandestined Anomaly only needs OS 6.0. Hex3 automatically loses in this category because you have to purchase a Nerf gun in order to play.
Low Price Winner: Pokemon Go
While Clandestined Anomaly does have a low price in order to play the remainder of the game, Pokemon Go doesn’t have that same limitation and you only have to spend money when you want to make it easier on yourself. Hex3 also automatically loses here because you have to purchase a Nerf gun in order to play, which far exceeds the low price bar set forth by Clandestined Anomaly.
Overall Winner: Pokemon Go
Did we really expect anything different though? I mean, most of the VR and AR are focused around products that are known to sell well with gamers. Even the Augmented Reality provided by the Oculus with Facebook is sold around the fact that you can play games with your friends.
There weren’t a lot of AR applications this year, so Pokemon Go beat out most of the competition simply because there was not much competition to be had. Sure, I could have included games like Ingress but Ingress doesn’t actually augment our reality more so it takes our Google map API and uses it as a Game asset, like Geocaching does. These games actually augment how we view and interact with the reality in front of us, not on a computer generated map that we interact with and that’s exactly why they’re on our list of the best in this year’s VR Awards. If you think we missed your game, please comment down below.
