Unity Awards at Unite Boston

Monzo

Madfinger Games’ Monzo is a model builder app – choose your model and ‘build’ it -no need for glue, paint or hunting for that missing piece! You can paint and customize your finished model, take pictures to share with other users, and even view a Virtual Reality version of your model using built-in Google Cardboard functionality.

A lot of kit
Kit building starts with selecting which of your model kits to construct. A ‘Sports Car’ kit is included with the app and more kits are available to purchase in the built-in store, including licensed kits from Revell. Details about each kit give a brief description of the model, the number of pieces and whether the kit features ‘Expert Mode’ or not. Kits with Expert Mode enabled can be constructed without following the instructions – a challenge when some contain over 100 pieces! There are many different types of model, including cars, motorbikes, aeroplanes, military machines and spacecraft. There are also dinosaurs to construct if machinery isn’t your thing.

Building your kit
Building is a simple case of following the instructions on the top right of the screen and dragging the individual parts to their correct places, at which point they snap together. Some kits have pop-up information about the subject model as you attach pieces. For example, kits based on Leonardo Da Vinci’s drawings inform you about the theories behind his designs.
When the model is complete it can be painted to your taste and spruced up with various stickers by using the painting section of the app. Like the building interface, it is simply drag and drop, with repositioning and scaling for perfect sticker application.

The finished product
There are several things you can do with your finished models. All models have animations and cross-sections to view by tapping the corresponding button. Monzo also features a photography studio (featuring Instagram-like filters) where you can take pictures of your models to share on the official website.

Cardboard Kits
A highlight of Monzo is the ability to view your creations in VR with a Google Cardboard headset. At any point in the building process you can tap the Cardboard icon to switch to a VR view of proceedings. Currently this is for viewing only – you can’t continue building, but you can view all your models and get a better sense of how they are constructed.

Monzo is an interesting app, and a good use of Unity for a more creative purpose. The building and VR views are very smooth and the models are detailed – relaxing music in the background as you build is a nice touch too. Monzo’s sharing aspect could be fun, as there are regular competitions for model makers on the Monzo website – some of the winners so far are impressive! Overall, Monzo is a good experience and the extra touch of VR, although limited, is a unique aspect that makes it stand out.

Toca Kitchen 2

Toca Boca’s cooking simulator for children is designed with the idea of ‘play for the sake of play’ in mind. Toca Boca Kitchen 2 is a cooking sandbox with no scores, timers or set goals. The aim is simple: feed your dinner guest anything you can create!

Friends for dinner
To begin, you must choose a friend to invite for dinner – a girl, a boy and a
tie-wearing monster. Each is well animated and voiced, with some genuinely funny reactions to the delights or disasters you put in front of them.

In the kitchen
In front of your friend is an empty plate; to the left of the screen are ingredients in a fridge and to the right, cooking utensils. Below, by tapping the salt and pepper icon, you can find bowls to put spare ingredients in,and a variety of sauces and spices to squeeze and shake onto your food.

Get cooking
To start cooking, simply drag an ingredient out of the fridge onto the table or across to the cooking utensils. The interface for the utensils is intuitive, swipe to chop or tap a button to blend, for example. You can slice, juice, fry, boil and bake anything you choose…how about a squid and tomato smoothie with a dash of lemon? When everything is prepared to perfection, place it on the plate in front of your guest, then drag it into their waiting mouths. They will eat almost anything and react in a number of different ways from disgust to delight. It’s quite entertaining to discover that a dinner guest who looks in horror at boiled fish suddenly finds it delicious baked with a slice of watermelon and a splash of ketchup.

Aimed at children and parents, Toca Kitchen 2 is a colourful, humorous (and clean!) way to experiment with food. It is well thought out with the intention of appealing to everyone – a Vegetarian Mode hidden in the settings removes all meat from the kitchen!
The Toca Boca website encourages parents to talk to their children about their Toca Kitchen discoveries and make it a shared experience that could lead to some real kitchen experimentation together, something that perhaps makes Toca Kitchen 2 more than just a device-based activity.