Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Social Media
  3. News

Snapchat’s new Snappables Lenses are AR games you play with your face

Hillary K. Grigonis
By
Introducing Snappables

Snapchat wants to redefine augmented reality because the platform’s latest Lenses aren’t just for altering your looks or your surroundings. On Wednesday, April 25, Snapchat launched Snappables, Lens-based games that serve as the platform’s first shared AR experience.

Recommended Videos

Snappables are AR games and experiences played inside the Snapchat camera where your face becomes the controller. For the game-like lenses, facial expressions and other movements will control the character in the game. One game, for example, invites players to open their mouth to move around the game space to catch falling eggs. Some games also use touch and other motions.

Related

The second type of Snappable is less like a game and designed more as an interactive AR party. These Lenses, a Snapchat representative says, allows users to invite their friends to a virtual rock band or dance party.

Snapchat says that Snappables are designed as shared AR experiences — so while you could play some of those games solo, the games are really designed to be sent in a Snap to challenge friends. In these game-like Snappables, users can play, then send the Snap to a friend as a challenge to beat your top score.

While Snappables are designed as interactive games, the feature lives right alongside Snapchat’s other AR Lenses. With the update, the usual puppy dog masks and Lenses Snapchatters know and love will be to the right of the camera button. The new Snappables will be organized to the left of the button. The design keeps the games separate from the usual lenses, while simultaneously presenting them in a way that makes the Snappables easy for existing Snapchat users to find and play.

From the start, games will range from fighting aliens to playing basketball, but Snap says new Snappables will be released every week. The games are rolling out this week with an app update for both iOS and Android.

The AR games comes as Snap continues to push the platform as a camera, using AR to redefine what, exactly, that camera can do, including expanding custom Lens options. Earlier in 2018, the platform launched a Snap Maps geocaching game with a virtual Easter egg hunt.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Hillary K. Grigonis
Hillary K. Grigonis
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Hillary never planned on becoming a photographer—and then she was handed a camera at her first writing job and she's been…
If you like Elden Ring, play 2021’s most underrated game
Sable watches the sunset from a perch.

Elden Ring was released to widespread critical acclaim and adoration over a month ago. It proved how open worlds that emphasize discovery and exploration engage and immerse players more than a world that just feels like a hub for a checklist of missions and collectibles. Unfortunately, Elden Ring isn't a game for everyone, myself included, due to its crushing difficulty and some other questionable design choices. 
Thankfully, Elden Ring isn't the only game to contain an open world that enables that much player freedom. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is the easiest comparison to make, but an underrated indie game from 2021 also gives Elden Ring's open world a run for its money. The best part: It's more relaxing than Elden Ring because it doesn't contain an ounce of combat. 
That game in question is Sable from Shedworks and Raw Fury. Released for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S in September 2021, Sable uses an open world with immense freedom to tell a coming-of-age story that's as long or short as the player wants it to be. Whether you're a fan of Elden Ring looking for a similar game to sink your teeth into or someone who likes the freedom of Elden Ring's open world but can't get past its eccentricities, Sable should be the next game you play.
Sable - Launch Trailer - Available Now (4k)
Beneath the mask
In Sable, you play as the titular character, a young girl from the Ibex tribe on the giant desert planet of Midden who must go on a journey across the planet to collect masks. When Sable is ready, she can return to the village and choose a mask to determine what she'll do for the rest of her life. After a somewhat confined beginning where the player learns to float in the air and also creates a hoverbike called a Glider, they then set off into Midden's vast deserts, free to meet people, complete tasks for them, and solve puzzles while collecting masks and learning about the history of the world.
The moment when players are driving away from the Ibex tribe into the desert and Japanese Breakfast's original song Glider kicks in trumps the opening of both Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring in getting the players excited to explore a large world. Couple that with distinct visuals and excellent sound design, and you have a game that's a treat to look at and play. 
Although the player is directed toward a specific village after leaving Sable's tribe, they can choose to go anywhere from the start. The player's floating ability and stamina allow them to climb anything they come across. Players will slowly uncover the history of Sable's world while learning more about the cultures and kinds of people that populate it, which fans of Elden Ring's hands-off storytelling will appreciate. No matter where players go, they can meet another wandering traveler or complete a puzzle platforming challenge to get a mask. Sable is an experience that purely cares about that feeling of adventure, so there's no combat or overreliance on adjusting and leveling up Sable's stats. While this minimalist approach might seem too simple, it actually makes it a fantastic companion piece to Elden Ring. 
Relaxing, not taxing
Sable does many of the same things correctly as FromSoftware's latest, but without any of the overwhelming -- and sometimes poorly explained -- fluff. Players don't have to worry about difficult roadblocks that force them to explore and get good. Sable enables players to go anywhere they want and do anything they want until at least three masks are collected. Players can beat Sable in just a few hours, but the game has enough depth to support players for much longer than that with the number of quests to complete and masks to collect. The game features a quest log too, so even with its minimalist aesthetic and UI, you'll never feel truly lost.

Sable demonstrates that the difficulty isn't what makes Elden Ring so great; world design that encourages and rewards players for exploring does. Games like Breath of the Wild, Sable, and Elden Ring understand it and are three of the best open-world games in recent years for that reason. But out of this triple threat of standard-setting open-world games, Sable has garnered the least attention and acclaim for its efforts, making it a hidden gem. Now that Elden Ring has indoctrinated over 12 million players into this modern version of the open world, Sable is worth revisiting.
Sable is available now for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. It's even on Xbox Game Pass. 

Read more
Apple’s new AR headset may use Face ID technology to track hand gestures
Apple VR Headset Concept by Antonio De Rosa

Apple has an augmented reality (AR) headset in the works, and a well-known analyst now predicts that it will use Face ID to track hand movements.

The upcoming headset is said to be equipped with more 3D sensing modules than iPhones and, according to the report, may one day replace iPhones altogether.

Read more
Microsoft and Samsung could team up on new AR headset
microsoft hololens 2

Samsung and Microsoft might be teaming up on a new augmented reality headset, with a possible release coming in 2024, according to a new rumor.

Digital Trends can not verify the original report behind the rumor, but according to The Elec, Microsoft and Samsung have reportedly started working on this project that's scheduled to last two years. Samsung apparently started its task force for the project in March and Microsoft in the summer. Multiple divisions of Samsung's business are also involved in the product, including Samsung Display, Electro-Mechanics, and SDI.

Read more