BrixAR

Who wouldn't enjoy stacking virtual blocks in the middle of their living room?

BrixAR came about spontaneously, riding the wave of ARKit's popularity after Apple's presentation. I quickly added a basic Augmented Reality integration to Unity 3D, and my boss at LabLike played around with different demos, brainstorming how we could use this tech. I immediately fell in love with BrixAR's idea.

The scope of work was crazy because it also included a network layer with elements of economy and user interactions. We planned that players would unlock different types of blocks and create their own structures. They could then share their designs with others for feedback and downloads. I was responsible for figuring out what we needed and implementing the client side, which involved communicating via REST API and handling the building scene. Interestingly, the second part was harder, even though I had more experience with it. My boss was very detail-oriented, making sure users would have fun stacking the blocks. He had a great sense for these things. Today, we'd call his feedback the work of an user experience designer.

I mentioned the scope was crazy, but we only realized that when one-third of the team left (read: one person). We scrapped the network features, but they were already deeply rooted in BrixAR, and at that point, completely redesigning the gameplay wasn't an option. The project shrank and had a few rough edges, but I still think it was a charming app with a fun, relaxing vibe.

Today, I don't think you can play BrixAR anymore – I haven't seen it in the app store. There's also not much info about it online. Looking back, it's clear the mobile market was starting to close off to smaller studios around that time, and without solid marketing, even a great product couldn't break through. Maybe I'm just being sentimental, but I like to believe that BrixAR was an undiscovered gem.