15 Jul Augmented Reality Game: Ruka

Me and Shalua always write up ideas and concepts we want to develop together specifically using AR technology. Upon much research and testing we decided to utilize Facebook’s Spark AR capabilities to make a game that can be played on instagram. The game is called Ruka ( https://www.instagram.com/ar/678652736233946/). It is a game where you play a character who is skating down different streets in Tanzania jumping over obstacles along the way.

The character moves forward on his own and you control the jumping action by blinking.

GAME ASSETS

I worked on the illustration side of the game. Creating the look of the game in general. There are there are 3 assets that I drew:

1. Character
2. Background
3. Obstacles

1. The Character

The character design is inspired by a roller bladder you would see in Dar es salaam. For the game animation I drew 4 frames for different sequences for the game as shown. For the frames to be used in the game, I saved each individually as a PNG. That means that I had 4 PNGs of the characters labelled normal, about to jump, jump, and game over.

These PNGs will be imported into the game for the animation.

2. Background

In the latest update,  Juma is skating down Coco Beach in Dar es salam. He will be jumping over cones and coconuts along the way. I took some rough pictures to use as reference and did sketches of coco beach and the road and drew the illustration from the sketches.

The background will be in a loop and it will show the character skating down the road.

3. Obstacles

The obstacles that Juma jumps over are also drawn and placed in the game. Each obstacle is drawn separately and exported as a PNG to be imported into the game.

THE RESPONSE TO RUKA

We launched the first version of the game on April 23rd 2020 and the response has been, for lack of a better word, amazing! A number of our close friends and relatives shared videos and screenshots of them playing the game. People started competing to see who can get the highest score (the most I saw was more than 300! I can’t fathom how one could get that). It was very exciting to see how the game was received and we were in for a shocker when we started seeing the numbers.

Since its launch, Ruka has been seen by more than 20,000 users , opened more than 6,000 times and 2,989 captures.

THE FUTURE OF RUKA

New locations, new characters, and more obstacles to jump over.

We expect to keep updating the game by adding new backgrounds as well as changing the character. We will keep building the world and the story of Ruka so expect more announcements to come soon.