The Guillotine

The Guillotine is a Arduino controlled, one on one, tug-of-war like pub game that tests players’ strength and reaction time. The game consists of countdown lights like those in F1 racing and two heavily spring loaded ropes. Once the lights go out the first player to fully extend their rope wins, but they must be careful not to pull too early.

Team: Martin Allsbrook
Role: Ideation, Prototyping, Wiring, Scripting, Construction
Tools used: Arduino, C++, Hand tools, Solder
Timeline: April – May 2023

Prototyping & Finding the Fun

My work on The Guillotine required a fair amount of finding the fun. The original idea for the game came from an assignment to design an alternative, arcade style controller for a game another student was making. The game was described as:

“...a two player luck based cooperation game, where each player can choose to go down their path based on what they think they see behind a wall. players have to tug of war by pressing their respective button, either convincing their partner their side is good, or beating them in tug of war, and the player who wins has their path chosen (left or right). It is a 50/50 chance for each path that there will be a buddy behind the wall that rewards points, or a bomb that will remove health from a shared HP pool, and the path continues for multiple levels with varying buddies or bombs.”

The tug of war mechanic really stuck out to me as something that could be a lot of fun, especially when combined with the idea that its purpose is to resolve an argument over picking heads or tales in a virtual coin flip. To capitalize on this I decided to build a controller that physically simulates a game of tug of war and sends the winner as an input to the game.

Rope Tests

My earliest prototypes focused on testing different rope, pulley and spring mechanisms. Originally I wanted to use a very large rope similar to those used in real tug of war, along with three springs to make it harder to pull. After some looking around I found that it was very hard to find large pulleys and opted for a smaller rope. I also tested the doubble spring setup on a wood frame and found it was far too difficult.

Makey Makey

My early prototypes had a similar form to my final prototype but simply used a Makey Makey to send inputs to my laptop which was running the game. The Makey Makey didn’t require a single line of code to get working, greatly simplifying the prototype build. All I had to do was connect it to simple circuits that would close once one of the rope was fully pulled.

Prototype Takeaways

After some playtesting with this Makey Makey based prototype I started to realize that the fast paced version of tug of war I had created worked well. It was surprisingly fun to see who could pull really hard faster, however aspects like the argument and coinflip weren’t adding as much as I had thought. In addition the mechanics that were working weren’t really a game on their own. I took note of a lot of useful information during the playtest, most evidently mechanics that were fun were not a game on their own and needed a clear start, rules, and signifiers in addition to many general improvements.

It Works

First of all I saw that competing to be the first to pull the ropes was extremely fun. Although it was difficult to pull the ropes, players were seeing how fast they could pull them, not how hard, making winning the game possible for almost anyone regardless of strength.

Making It A Game

Secondly, I needed to define and communicate a clear start and rules for the game. At the moment the players had to count down to the tug of war manually and there were no consequences for cheating and pulling early. I solved these issues by creating a scoreboard for each player that included countdown lights similar to those seen at the start of F1 races. If players started pulling before the lights went green a point was given to their opponent. The game was played to 3 points.

Remove the Computer

I also found that a connected computer wasn't necessary for calculations or to display information, and an Arduino connected to some LED scoreboards could suffice and make the game much more compact, independant, and arcade like.

Propper Audience

Finally with the help of some feedback from my classmates and teacher I realized that the strength based and competitive nature of the game made it perfect for a bar or pub setting, and decided to focus the game around this audience.