AR games have seen their ups and downs. I don’t want to say that augmented reality games are late bloomers but they only truly started to gain traction with camera-enabled devices such as our smartphones. TokoToko from Kalank picks AR gaming up from a different angle though. What is it all about? I looked into it and I’m happy to share some details with you.
Your AR creativity special time
Tokotoko puts the focus on story-driven gameplay while being a positive influence on your creativity as well. Handdrawn characters and objects “come to life” and become a cartoony 3D model on your phone. I don’t want to spoil any parts of the story but it’s more of a coming-of-age theme than anything else and it works very well. In the game, you are accompanying the cat Hako, a young TokoToko and she has the power to make your drawings turn into AR.
The style of the characters remind me a little bit of Animal Crossing but I couldn’t they that it’s a direct copy. To be honest, it’s hard to design small, cute, paper animal characters that don’t resemble anything from Animal Crossing games at all. As the whole game has nothing to do with any of the aspects of Animal Crossing, I don’t worry about a possible clone at all. TokoToko is a nice idea on how to combine creativity with AR technology.
Release soon?
The french developer Kalank plans to release TokoToko in Fall, later this year, on iOS. We currently don’t know of plans to also release this title on Android OS but considering the number of devices running on Android, it would make sense. It is also currently not clear whether or not it will be a free download but we are keen to see it launch soon.
YouTube: TokoToko Story Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZX5ZQk3Csg
YouTube: TokoToko – July 2019 Gameplay – English
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EilbdJnO2Jk
Photo credit: All shown material is owned by Kalank.
