THINGS I LEARNED AT GAMECITY: PUNCHING CUSTARD CAN BE A VIDEOGAME

10.31.2012

Quite on the opposite side of the silly <--> sublime spectrum from GameCity’s Proteus Live revelations, but somehow none less awesome, Punch the Custard was one of the festival’s favorites, and works exactly as the name would have you believe.

Created by George ‘v21‘ Buckenham, the creator of Cubes, A Bastard and co-creator of the Proteus Frog God Mod, the game functions via a simple Arduino controller that completes a circuit when a player stands with one hand on a sheet of tin foil and the other is used to, well, you know, punch the custard — the mixture’s dilatant properties (I did indeed have to wikipedia that) firming the fluid as you strike it.

In practice, it’s a 2-player competitive game where each is racing to punch the custard as many times as possible in 60 seconds, with some good lessons that seem to have been taken from games like Copenhagen Game Collective’s B.U.T.T.O.N., where occasionally the game will ask you to stop punching the custard for a limited time, keeping you from simply going punch-nuts and not paying attention to the game itself.

While the game’s mostly only been played at live events like GameCity and Hide & Seek’s Weekender event in London (where the above video was captured), Buckenham’s provided full instructions and source code for putting together your own custard punching showdowns here, apron not included.