Interactive Video Game Table Turns Eating Lunch Into A Game For Two

When I first saw this video game table, the first thing that came to my mind was that it would be the perfect tool to entice kids to eat their vegetables. It wasn’t designed just for kids though. This video game table was built around the premise that in our busy everyday lives, we all gobble up our lunch like it was our last meal. We eat fast (at least here in the States), and this pixelated game for two players rewards us for being speediest eater.

It turns our fast eating into a sport, but there’s more to this table than that. It not only tracks how fast you eat, but it also tracks what order you eat your foods in. It will turn your lunch into a competitive game of skill and endurance. This table was created by two students, Sures Kumar and Lana Z. Porter (both from the Royal College of Art). They used openFrameworks and Arduino to create their video game table masterpiece.

The table tells you what order to eat your foods in. Then, whoever can eat the correct foods in the correct order the fastest wins the game. You can see in the video below that it has a retro flavor, and it is obviously inspired by the video games from the ’80s. You might be wondering how the game can determine the winner. The secret is in the forks. They are connected smart forks that can detect which foods you are eating, and how fast you’re taking them off the plate.

According to Sures and Lana, it’s a “Guitar-Hero style eating game in which players compete in a one minute showdown to see who can eat the most food in the correct order.” Just think, if you could eat your entire lunch in one minute, you’d have a lot of time leftover in that lunch break of yours.