FANTA AR GAME
Fuelling colourful adventures
Fuelling Colourful Adventures was a Fanta promotion that ran in Australia only, through the Coles Express service station chain. Buy a Fanta in store, get a scratch card with a PIN code, scan the QR code, and you’re into a web-based AR road trip game. I designed the game at Blippar: a camper van driving down a road augmented into the player’s own surroundings, racing to go as far as possible before the fuel runs out.
The creative idea came from The Idea Shed. It paired Fanta’s playful, spontaneous character with the road-trip role of a fuel stop, and it aimed to make the promotion the most interactive as well as the biggest. My job was to turn that into something people could play in 60 seconds on a phone. I did the game design, designed all the visual assets and sounds, and covered the UI and UX, from the loading screen and instructions to AR van placement and the prize reveal.
GAME DESIGN
ONE ROAD, ONE VAN, SIXTY SECONDS – KEEP THE FUEL UP, DODGE THE GREY AND BURST THROUGH WITH A HIT OF FANTA COLOUR.
The player places the van in their space, a countdown runs, and the road trip begins. Tapping the arrow buttons switches lanes. The Coles fuel gauge is the core tension: collecting Coles Fuel Stars tops it up, and if it drops too low the van slows to a crawl. Obstacles in the road slow the van down too, and the player has to steer round them to get back to full speed. Fanta bottles are the power-up. Each one fights back the grey with a burst of colour, a short speed boost and a moment of invincibility. Roadside signs and billboards add to the road-trip feel and can promote Australian landmarks like the Big Banana and Uluru. The score is simply how far you got.
The prize is decided before the game starts. After registering on the campaign microsite and validating the PIN by SMS, a win or no-win result is attached to the player’s profile and passed to the game. The game ends with the reveal. Winners go back to the microsite to claim their prize, and anyone who didn’t win is prompted to buy another Fanta for a second go, which ties the play directly back to repeat purchase.
