Wawel Royal Castle / City of Kraków · 2022
Kraków’s dragon, back in the city in augmented reality.
An educational AR app for Wawel Royal Castle and the City of Kraków: find the Wawel Dragon at five locations around the city, interact with it in AR, and unlock a piece of the legend at each stop.
- Role
- Unity Developer
- Team
- CinematicVR · with Franciszek Matysik (Hackathon for Wawel 2021 winner)
- Stack
- iOS · Android · AR · animated 3D model
01 — THE PROBLEM
A legend for a generation that lives on its phones.
The Wawel Dragon is one of Kraków’s icons. Wawel Royal Castle and the City of Kraków wanted an educational experience that gets young people out into the city and engaged with the legend. The dragon itself is an animated, interactive 3D model based on historical engravings supplied by the client.
02 — THE BUILD
Three decisions that turned an app into a walk.
A map that gets people walking
The app opens on a map with directions to five locations around Kraków. The dragon only appears when you get there.
One interaction per place
Each location has its own AR animation: wake the dragon near the Dragon’s Den, help it land on the Main Square, make it breathe fire. Every interaction unlocks a fact on the Legend screen.
A photo mode built for sharing
Users can take an AR photo with the dragon at any time and share it straight to social media, which also makes photo contests easy to run.
03 — THE IMPACT
- city locations
- 5
- interactive dragon animations
- 5
- app stores, free to download
- 2