Happy Holidays everyone! Have fun playing!

Hey everyone! Time to drop the keyboard for a while and get out there egg hunting and enjoying some good food offline with your loved ones (if you happen to celebrate Easter).

But if your 21st century children (or yourself) would rather like to play with some digital goods, you could also take a look at the new app by Berlin start-up Toywheel: they kick off a virtual car game, bringing the physical and the digital world together once more:

I like the looks of it and the cute designed elements. Racing games in AR have been done before, but I still like this concept very much (I did implement my own AR-Racinggame with spaceships). It is a winning combination, where shrunk objects (like cars) are still convincing declaring them as toys with a known mini scale. The developers say that it is supposed to be a more open approach where the kids can play freely without the scripted need for winning/racing, giving them back the freedom of playing freely (as it was with matchbox cars all those years). A nice twist. Let’s see how they evolve the concept.

What I still would love to see is the direct manipulation of the track by different (independent) markers: just pick up a marker for a ramp and move it around to change the track. This would give a deeper interaction between real and virtual! Let’s wait for more!

… but what I don’t understand is why the kid is so obsessed with food in the video (prominent donut eating and pizzas…). But it fits to our Easter theme. :-)

Enjoy and happy holidays!