Thumb Wars

2024

Course: 4.044 Interaction Intelligence

Instructors(s): Marcelo Coehlo, JB LaBrune

Collaborator(s): Kevin Tang

Introduction

Thumb Wars is a game inspired by the physicality of tackling in sports. It’s designed to capture the explosiveness, athleticism and strategy of sport, all within the palm of your hands.

It was created for Interaction Intelligence, a design studio taught by Marcelo Coehlo. The assignment was to create a 1D game and controller.

Inspiration

We were inspired by several interactions:

  • The cartoonish act of winding up a punch
  • The tackling and fumbling that occurs during sports like rugby or American football
  • The sensation of placing and breaking down a block, like in Minecraft
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Visually, we drew inspiration from several sources. We wanted to pay homage to the aesthetics of retro gaming consoles. We were also drawn to ergonomic shapes and translucent/milky housing of components.

How to Play

Orange and Green spawn at opposite ends of the 1d platform and a black ball spawns in between them. To win the round, the player must cross to the other side with the ball. However, we wanted to introduce an element of strategy - users can put down obstacles (with the back trigger) which they themselves can pass through but other users must break down (by pulling the front trigger). Users can also tackle one another and force them to drop the ball. As the rounds progress, the 1D interface becomes longer and users may put down more blocks. Best of three rounds win.

Implementation

Hardware

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Feel free to reach out to my project partner, Kevin Tang, who executed all the hardware + fabrication!

Software

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Interaction Design

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Players can move across the 1d space and drop an obstacle to drop the other opponent

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Players smash the other opponents obstacle to break it down and tackle the other player to get them to drop the ball

Contributions

Kevin Tang and Kelly Fang both contributed to the concept and design of the object. Kevin Tang contributed to the hardware and fabrication. Kelly Fang contributed to the software development. Marcelo Coehlo provided design guidance throughout the process.

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I also got some hand modelling experience :)