After months of pitches and fine-tuning, the Balti Virtual team is pleased to announce that we have been accepted into Snapchat’s Ghost Partnership. We are Ghost Lab fellows! We’ve been an official Snapchat lens creative partner for years, so we’re thrilled to be able to expand on our knowledge of the platform and offer a new experience to the 306 million monthly active Snapchat users.
Within the Ghost program, there are six tracks that a company can apply to; Utility, Games, Education, Shopping & Fashion, Spectacles, and Verizon 5G. Given that Balti Virtual has roots in the video game industry, it was an obvious choice for us to apply for the gaming track.
Our game concept uses Snapchat’s brand new Connected Lens technology. We were immediately interested in the ability for multiple Snapchat users to interact with the same experience if they are in the same space and even if they aren’t. In the post-pandemic world that we’re all living in, being able to create a game that people can play anywhere was really important to the Balti Virtual team.
That’s how and why our multiplayer augmented reality game, currently dubbed “Snap Brawler”, was created! This game is a tabletop Super Smash Brothers-style battle experience for two or more players. Players will have their own custom avatars and can either play against another Snapchat user or choose to be a spectator that encourages/influences the brawl from the sidelines.
Our team is always staying up to date on the latest augmented reality trends in social media. That’s why we’ve been creating AR experiences in Snapchat for many years. Our first Snapchat game was with the Washington Capitals and Giant in 2019. After buying a special-edition box of Ovi O’s, fans could unlock an augmented reality game in Snapchat to become the Capitals’ team captain, Alexander Ovechkin. The goal of the game was to hit as many moving targets as possible with the honey-nut Ovi O’s puck before the time ran out. This game was a hit and we received a massive amount of praise from the team at Snapchat. Since then, we’ve continued to create additional Snapchat games. Our latest experience was Flappy Unicorn which has seen over 350,000 plays.
Snap Brawler is scheduled to be released in the Spring of 2022, so stay tuned!