Face Raiders

• Developer — HAL Laboratory • Publisher — Nintendo • Producer — Shinya Takahashi • Director — Toshiaki Suzuki • Composer — Shogo Sakai • Genre — Simulator, shooter • Modes — Single-player • Platforms — Nintendo 3DS

Face Raiders is a single player augmented reality shooter game that uses the handheld's gyroscopic controls and cameras. It was first released with the Nintendo 3DS and has been preloaded on all devices in the family. The game is an extended tech demo with a total of two modes and nine levels. Six of these are for experienced players, and the other three stages are meant for those unfamiliar with the game. After taking pictures of people's faces, the game creates enemies for the player, who must shoot them. The camera perspective is from the rear camera's viewpoint, which enemies will break through and hide behind. People walking in the background add on to the gameplay by giving more faces to the camera and thus creating more enemies. There are combos for repeating an action that multiply the number of points. There are butterflies which can be hit in order to refill health, and bombs are used as a quick way to defeat surrounding enemies. At the end of each stage, the player battles a boss. When the boss is defeated, its helmet will transform into an afro. Local high scores are recorded on a leaderboard. By pressing Y on the level select screen, the player can hear some advice, and can turn on surprise snaps for taking photos while playing a level.

HAL Laboratory began developing the game in 2010 alongside other built-in software for the Nintendo 3DS. The team wanted to create a game that would interest people who had played the training software. The prototype, named Face Ace, used the player's and other people's faces to create a comedic experience. HAL first started building using filters, which ended up being included to attack enemies. The merge lens was popular among developers, where two faces would be combined. At the end of development, HAL added a feature where the player can point the 3DS at someone else's face and it would become an enemy. The game's AR features were created with the Nintendo 3DS Camera Team.