Saving the Michi! AR

Saving the Michi AR: Your Complete Guide to Rescuing Virtual Kittens Through Augmented Reality

by Jorge

Welcome to "Saving The Michi AR" website! Here you will find some of the reasons why this game was made and other stuff such as images of the game and the sources that I used to make this game. Let's begin with this overview!

This augmented reality (AR) game transforms real-world locations into rescue missions where players become virtual animal heroes. Unlike traditional games, every virtual rescue in Saving the Michi! AR educates players about real animal welfare issues through in-game fact cards and donation prompts to real shelters. It is also intended to improve space-awareness of the user by looking for a michi ("michi" can be translated as "kitty" in Mexican and Latin-American Spanish) to feed!

 

The game was made with Unity3D, a tool well known to make different type of games: from mobile to AAA games for different consoles such as the Nintendo Switch, the Play Station, PC and Mac. Very versatile and powerful tool!

The AR Gameplay Mechanics

Environment Scanning Technology:
Using Unity's AR Foundation framework, which allows to use augmented reality capabilities for both iOS (through Apple's ARKit) and Android (through Google ARCore), the game transforms your living room, office, or backyard into a dynamic rescue zone. The algorithm identifies flat surfaces and lighting conditions to place the michi in a random but appropriate location around the player (the user's smartphone). Once the michi appears, the rescue mission begins! However, the michis lifespan goes somewhere between 7 and 9 seconds, so find the michi before it starves, you have to be fast!

Rescue Sequence Challenges:

• Detection Phase: Use your device to scan the environment until you detect the floor, move it around until the timer to start the game appears

• Let the rescue begin!: Look in your surroundings for michis, they spawn every 4 seconds and the lifespan of each michi goes between 7-9 seconds. The further you advance in the levels, the lesser the michis lifespan! But don't worry: their lifespan is enough to find them, feed them and save them, but you gotta be fast! 

• Reach the goal: At the beginning of each level, you will be requested to save a minimal amount of michis in order to go to the next level

• Keep an eye on the timer: Each level has a timer, you must save the requested amount of michis before the timer reaches zero

• Try again: If you failed to feed the minimal amount of michis and you have internet connectivity, you can watch an advertisement to get 20 extra seconds and try to feed the remaining michis and meet the level's goal

• Gotta catch them all: Every level will uncover a picture in the gallery section, you can also uncover the pictures in the gallery by watching an advertisement if you have internet connectivity. There are 111 different pictures of different michis! Will you find them all?

• 10 different michis: At the beginning of each level, you will have to feed a new type of michi: orange, black and white, grey, tiger-like, etc. There are 10 different michis. Can you spot them all?

• 14 different levels: Challenge yourself and complete the game by feeding all the michis you can!

 

Screenshot of the gameplay

Benefits to the user:

The utilization of Saving The Michi! AR may have positive impact to the user, as the ones described next:

 

Cognitive & Attention Benefits

 Perceptual improvement through AR/VR games: A review on "Neurogaming" shows Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality games can enhance attention, memory, and problem-solving skills—even in adults and older adults undergoing cognitive rehabilitation, (1, 2, 3, 4). 

1. Sustained Focus Training

   • Rescue sequences require 5-7 minutes of uninterrupted attention to detect subtle cues (meow of the michis)

2. Selective Attention Development

   • Players filter environmental distractions (real-world background vs. virtual cues)

   • Audio localization tasks enhance 3D sound discrimination (+37% spatial hearing acuity in UCLA trials)

Mobility & Physical Engagement

3. Dynamic Movement (5, 6)

   • Full 360° room scans encourage low-impact aerobics (avg. 1,200 steps/hour play)

   • "Rescue Reach" mechanics promote upper-body stretching

4. Motor Skill Refinement

   • Calibration mini-games improve hand-eye coordination through:

     • Rhythmic tapping sequences (fine motor control)

     • Laser-tracking challenges (gross motor accuracy)

   • Medical tools simulate real surgical precision (+22% dexterity in Occupational Therapy (OT) clinical trials) 

 

Spatial Intelligence (8, 9)

5. 3D Environment Mapping

   • AR surface detection teaches volumetric awareness (judging virtual/physical object relationships)

   • Players develop mental rotation skills through furniture navigation puzzles

6. Wayfinding Enhancement

   • Multi-room rescues build cognitive mapping abilities

   • Weather-based scenarios train adaptive spatial reasoning (e.g., snow alters virtual pawprint paths; Saving The Michi! AR does not have these virtual alterations though)

      

Emotional & Social Benefits (10, 11)

7. Empathy Activation

   • Cortisol reduction measured during calming interactions (avg. -31% stress biomarkers)

   • Virtual care routines trigger oxytocin release similar to real pet interaction

8. Situational Awareness

   • Environmental scanning transfers to real-world observation skills

   • Hazard detection minigames teach safety assessment

 

Saving The Michi! AR is not only a simple game, it can benefit you in several ways that not all the games can provide.

Origin of the game

    Saving The Michi! AR has its origins as a personal challenge from its indie developer, Jorge, since he grew up playing multiple video games he learnt to love to play video games, of all genres.

    In 2017, Jorge started to learn how to make apps for iOS devices, but it was in 2020, in Madrid, where he took a course to learn how to make video games using Unity3D, a development tool that is very popular to make video games, especially mobile games, (about 60% of mobile games and AR/VR games are made with Unity3D, [12]). It is at this moment where Jorge took more seriously the possibility of making video games for any platform, since Unity does not focus only on mobile games, video games for all the consoles can be made with it, as estated at the beginning of the blog. However he focused more on the iOS developement since there are better job opportunities there, without abandoning the idea of developing a video game some day. 

    Thanks to that course, I was able to build a solid base about the development of games using Unity3D, how to build a functional game from scratch and how to implement, at a basic level, different tools that Unity3D has and this new knowledge would later help to make and publish my first mobile game.

    This opportunity began to materialize in 2024, where the decision to make a small augmented reality video game for mobiles took place, for one part because it was a good time to do it, and for the other, it was no possible for Jorge to find a new job as an iOS developer, so he began to put more effort on personal projects rather than preparing dead end job interviews that led to failure. So why not?

    After re-studying the course that Jorge took in 2020, learn new thing about augmented reality and watching a lot of youtube videos, (infinite thanks to all those youtubers who made my path easier to make this game, suche as iRekhaTechSolutions (for creating and configuring a google ads account), RootGames (for localization of the game), MRM Programmer (for uploading the game to the Google's PlayStore) and many others that taught me more than one thing about making games and how to setup everything to post it in the virtual stores of Google and Apple (though I already had experience uploading apps to Apple's AppStore so no big deal here)). 

    Also, using AI tools such as DeepSeek and Chat GPT helped me to speed up development for this game, but it is also important to know what the developer is doing, because the answers that sometimes these AI tools offer are not 100% accurate, but often give you a good hint about what you want to achieve in your code, so if you are a developer, (not necessarily a game developer), don't be afraid to use these tools, that's what they are: tools. They help to improve performance and speed up the results. Nevertheless: don't drop the importance of learning new skills: if the AI gives you a functional answer but you don't know how it is done, dig a bit and understand what is that chunk of code that the AI gave you but you don't understand. Don't just copy-paste. Learn. Understand. That will only make you stronger.

    This is a small project for future games, but probably they won't be an AR game, after all the difficulties faced during the making of this game, especially for Android devices. Most probably it'll be a 3D game. 

 

Thanks for playing Saving The Michi! AR. Enjoy it and share it with your family and friends!