The AR isn't the international cry of a pirate, but stands here for Actual Reality. AR Pirates places an “island” close to your phone in the real world, which is then attacked by pirate ships. The catch is that you can only see the island when you look at the world through the screen on your handset and through the camera.

Mounted in front of your phone (in the virtual space of this world) is your own cannon, giving you the opportunity to attack the incoming pirates trying to steal the treasure from your island. You aim the cannon (which fires as soon as it's reloaded) by moving your phone around to get the cursor pointing towards where you want to aim the cannons - and as they're relatively slow, remember to aim just in front of any moving pirate ship.

This sort of game has been tried before; I vaguely remember the Siemens SX1 S60 phone back in early 2004 carrying a similar game, and there have been a number of “bugs in the sky” shooting games along the same principle of swinging the camera around in the real world. AR Pirates works a lot better than those games for two related reasons.

The first is that, rather than working around the phone in a space where things are flying, this game works on a flat plane – the sea. That means the graphics are not on some imaginary sphere with the phone at the centre, but are in a world, relate to each other, and that can be clearly seen through the screen.

The second is how this plane is generated – AR Pirates looks for three contrasting spots in the real world, which will be the anchors for an island. Developers Optricks Media recommend three coins on a contrasting coloured surface, spots drawn on a piece of paper, or (comically) three frisbees tied together and thrown in a river. The relative distance between the spots is calculated, and all the angles of your handset relative to these points can be calculated, allowing the graphics to be overlaid on the screen.

It all works, and technically it's a great piece of software. For that it gets a lot of kudos. But the game itself is quite superficial. With the cannon firing automatically, the fixed target to defend, and the roaming pirate ships popping up with regularity there's not much changing from level to level. There are some powerups to alter your cannon (or also provide you with a temporary shield) but these aren't sufficient to change how you play the game.

I also think that being allowed to play through ten levels once (or one level ten times) before having to buy the game is an insanely short time. Perhaps they already know the limited longevity of the game and want to snag the cash before the novelty wears off?

Having said that, I still think this is a great title to show off down the pub with – throw the spots on the table, add lots of piratical talk, and you've got an impressive game that everyone can understand. A smart social game, and great if you love showing off your smartphone, but it's little more than a very well put together distraction.