Air Hogs Connect: Mission Drone
KnapNok Games · iOS / Android + physical RC drone · 2016
Air Hogs Connect: Mission Drone is an augmented-reality game developed for Spin Master that combines a physical remote-controlled drone with a digital game running on a mobile device. Players fly the real drone over an AR tracking mat while completing missions inside a virtual science-fiction environment.
I worked on the project at KnapNok Games as a Game Designer / Level Designer, focusing on designing gameplay and levels around the possibilities and constraints of the physical drone. Unlike a conventional videogame, the player’s actions had to work simultaneously as physical flight and as interaction with the virtual game world.
Designing for a drone
My work involved thinking about how missions, spaces and challenges could be designed around the drone’s movement, responsiveness and limitations, while still creating a clear and enjoyable game experience. This meant treating the physical toy itself as part of the game system rather than simply as a controller.
The project gave me experience designing for the boundary between physical and digital play, and working with hardware constraints as part of the design process. One of the central design challenges was that the player was not controlling a virtual vehicle with perfectly predictable movement. They were flying a real drone in a real room.
That meant the levels and missions had to account for things such as the physical space available to the player, the behaviour and limitations of the drone, and the relationship between what was happening physically and what the player saw through the augmented-reality layer.