With Covid, Halloween is set to look a little different, where more people look to games and in-home scares rather than trick or treating, to get their spooky halloween kicks.
Friday Nights at Freddy’s (FNAF) AR, a survival horror AR game where animatronics jump out at you in your own home, has quickly become an AR category leader as one of the first games where AR is core to the gameplay, rather than an optional feature. This creates a whole new style of horror gameplay that brings the nightmare to life and puts you right at the center of the action!
The latest Halloween updates that will open up the exploding FNAF AR audience even further, include:
- Making FNAF AR compatible on 5x more devices:
- Illumix’ proprietary AR engine and API opens up gameplay to more phones (over 2K) and improves AR performance, expanding audience more than 2x – beyond just ARCore and ArKit enabled devices
- Introducing new modes of Mixed Reality gameplay:
- While players still have the experience of seeing the animatronics in their real world environment, certain characters will take you into a virtual world, right from your phone.
To develop interactive experiences from this unique camera-first perspective, means looking at user experience through a fresh lens and creating original AR technology. Illumix, creators of FNAF AR, has been developing a proprietary AR engine to allow it to continue building compelling MR games with greater reach, much like Unreal did for Epic. It is set to become the primary platform for any company looking for AR-first content & next-generation media.
Over the last 6 months, FNAF AR has continued to go from strength to strength:
- User Numbers & Engagement:
- Generated over 7M downloads, organically with no money spent on marketing or user acquisition
- Was featured as the overall Game of the Day on iOS
- Became the highest rated mass-market AR game: 4.6 iOS, 4.4 Android (compare to Pokemon Go 4.1 iOS, Minecraft Earth 4.0 iOS, Angry Birds AR 3.9 iOS)
- Hit the top of overall mobile rankings: #1 Trending game on Android, #2 Strategy game on Android, #2 Strategy game on iOS, #12 Overall game on iOS
- More than 1 year of total time spent in the AR experience on average by users per day.
- 69% of daily time spent in the app is spent actively engaging with the camera mode (compared to “AR-optional” games where a vast majority of players turn off the AR mode entirely).
- 65M+ Youtube views on FNAF AR content
The company has also introduced innovative AR Interactions, including new mechanics leveraging sound, motion, visuals, and even user actions to deepen immersion in the blended digital-real world. For example, users locate and ‘pick up’ digital objects, have real objects trigger digital content, or are forced to be still or move to increase their levels of involvement and immersion with the brand.
The company has secured $13 Million in funding to date and is actively growing/hiring, with Revenue, MAU, and DAU increasing month on month.
