Enchanted Contest of the Mystic Arts

We are always game for finding creative ways to hack today’s most innovative technologies. In the case of this multitouch, capacitive table, we developed a way for the table to “sense” physical objects and then literally turned our findings into a game. To test this innovation, the team crafted a fast-paced, air hockey game in the style of a Victorian penny arcade machine. The goal was to assess the responsiveness and capabilities of object detection found in such touch-screen surfaces. And the results were overwhelmingly positive. The virtual puck reacts to a virtual strike the same way its real-life counterpart would. The only major downside being an underground betting pool that has popped up around the office.

This experiment wasn’t conducted for a client. It was created as an internal R&D project led by a designer and developer. So, what did we accomplish? (Other than some good-natured, trash talk?) Well, the possibilities for interactive table top fun are nearly endless. Aside from table games such as pool, shuffleboard, and foosball, there’s also potential for traditional board or map-based games. But looking beyond games, we envision museum exhibits where placing an artifact on the table results in a narrator talking you through the finer points of the piece. Or, a supermarket that reacts to a product with nutritional content or recipes. But, we’ll get to work on that later, because we’re playing next.