First, there was the infamous PoolnudelschlagapparatPool Noodle Hitting Aparatus (PNHA). At Fusion Festival 2023, we had some pool noodles, some windshield wiper motors, and a wood construct to put a simple game into, so we did the only sensible thing to combine those things: You play Flappy Bird, and if you are too bad, you get hit with a pool noodle.

Afterwards, somebody mentioned that this would be great as an item in Mario Kart. As I knew there is an open-source clone of that - SuperTuxKart, an idea was born.

What it is

Two players, each in their own cart, play a local race of SuperTuxKart. When you collect an in-game item, instead of a koopa hitting the opponent on-screen, they get one of several physical effects at their seat: A fog burst hiding their vision, a water squirt making them flinch, or a harmless Poolnudelschlagapparat-thwack.

This installation relies on some customizations to the open-source codebase of SuperTuxKart such as adding custom items that notify when they are being used, as well as some custom physical hardware such as the water-squirter, an ethernet-connected scale to allow for Drinking-Tuxkart, and the ethernet-connected relay-boxes that are at the heart of actually triggering the items. As I have brought this installation so far to