Wink is the first iPhone game in which the gameplay is controlled by face gestures. The object of the game is to weave the wink emoji (“Wink”) through the text message bubbles that fall in the way by winking in the direction you want to move. Wink detects what you are doing with your face using face recognition technology and your front facing camera.
I really like simple games you can play to relax without thinking too much about them and I thought it would be fun to build a game you could play without touching your phone. It's not as relaxing as I hoped it would be but I love that it makes people laugh. My favorite part about it is the way it captures you flinching when you lose by snapping a photo right when you crash.
I'd love to hear what you think!
Don't Wink and drive ;)
Very cool! I'm a big believer computer vision for gameplay.
Not to nitpick, but you aren't the "first" -- last year I released "Super Selfie Dance", an iOS game in the Guitar Hero genre. :)
I'm surprised at your choice of winking for the fundamental motion: I found eye open/shut detection to be the weakest component of iOS face detection. Playing Wink just now with my glasses on, I saw it was having a hard time.
I'm sure you've thought of it, but a video of the people playing would be great. Player videos from Super Selfie Dance are hilarious!
@wanderingstan Oh really? I did some searching and couldn't find anything like it! Hope you aren't offended, I'll have to check out your app and stop telling people that I was first.
Winking is definitely not the easiest thing to detect on iOS and I have run into some problems myself. I find I can usually get it to function accurately if I experiment a little with different lighting, but I know glasses can interfere too. I like Winking a lot because it adds to the challenge and uniqueness and fits with the whole emoji theme.
Videos would be great to have but I've worked on photography apps before so I didn't have to spend much time to add it in. Maybe a good idea for version 2.
@forddavis No offense! We all know app store search is terrible.
I'm sure we faced the same problems with getting the lighting right. Mobile computer vision has made leaps and bounds in the last years, but there's still a lot of room for improvement in the core algorithms.
In the mean time, I'm excited to see more creative applications like Wink!
iinkling