Tag: alternative controller

Feature

Alternative gaming controllers facilitate full-body fun

This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. While videogames have inspired a staccato of button-tapping throughout their brief but effusive history, the majority of games makes use of few motions other than a twitching of hands and fingers. There are notable exceptions, such as poking tennis balls with the Wii Remote or waving at the Xbox Kinect, but the 900 other ligaments of human physiology get markedly less play. With the new generation of alternative gaming controllers, however, the days of button-mashing may not be long for this world. These recent and fascinating alternatives give traditional controls a…
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Threadsteading is a strategy game you play by sewing

Threadsteading is a strategy game about quilting, or perhaps more accurately, a strategy game that is quilting. Controlled by a quilting machine (or an embroidery machine in its portable form), Threadsteading is a two-player competitive game. In it, the players try to nab territories on a hexagonal grid, using a similar-shaped button-module to dictate the direction the player will guide the thread that the machine sews. The game was initially developed during a game jam at Disney Research Pittsburgh, the project helmed by Gillian Smith, alongside team members April Grow, Chenxi Liu, Lea Albaugh, Jen Mankoff, and Jim McCann. breaking…
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Game turns you into a 1920s phone operator, complete with vintage switchboard

It must be difficult for a game made on 89-year-old hardware to stand out anywhere, let alone at a conference brimming with excitement over upcoming virtual reality headsets like PlayStation VR and the HTC Vive—it wouldn’t help that this game assigns the player with a menial day job that’s now handled by computers, either. But when Kill Screen’s Jess Joho visited the alternate controller exhibition at this year’s GDC, she found herself most interested not in Sony and Valve’s latest technology, but rather Hello Operator, a game played with an actual telephone switchboard that first saw use in 1927. Hello Operator has…
Lipstrike
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Twitch streamer plays Counter-Strike with lipstick controller

Frequently placing second among Twitch’s most streamed games, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (2012) has become an institution among the website’s community. At any given moment, there are hundreds of streamers playing the title, all vying for attention as they each try to figure out the most entertaining way to shoot a terrorist. In this space, style is as important as skill, which is what makes Chloe Desmoineaux’s Lipstrike so clever. In Lipstrike, Desmoineaux streams normal matches of Counter-Strike, but rather than using a traditional keyboard and mouse to control her character, she has instead modified a normal lipstick container to serve as her…
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Planet Licker, a game that you play with your tongue

By far the most innocent game with the smuttiest implications at GDC this year was the alternative controller entry entitled Planet Licker. In the game’s fiction, you are a monster who eats planets made of popsicles. As the player IRL, you are also a popsicle-licking monster of sorts, only instead of planets your tongue is manhandling an edible controller. Planet Licker not only puts your tongue to the test; it’s also a race against time. You have to schlurp up six planets before the clock runs out. As part of the annual ALT.CTRL.GDC showcase, Planet Licker was an unusual experiment for creator Frank…