Saving Baby J - An arcade game

What it is

Walk-up arcade game with a science museum vibe for the Puget Sound. You throw orca plushies at a projected hit board to damage a boat and free Baby J, a calf stuck in a fishing net.

Finished booth with projected game and plush return slide

Final booth

Finding the interaction

I tried two controllers and Wizard-of-Oz tested both. Giant cardboard orcas you tilt, with a foot pedal to attack. Or throwing plushies at a screen while someone scores hits offstage. The throw won. It was obvious, and nobody needed a tutorial.

Two large cardboard orca controllers in front of a projected screen

Giant orca controllers

Person throwing an orca plushie at a projected screen

Throwing plushies

Making the hit board

I built a 15-button hit board on an Arduino Leonardo using analog resistor ladders, short on pins. Foam-core panels in front so you hit a surface, not a switch. Underneath, a skee-ball-style slide sent the plushies back.

The game is p5.js: intro, play, outro. Boat on a 5×3 grid mapped to the buttons, with hit, near-miss, and miss feedback.

Paper grid on a table with an orca plush marking a cell

Hit grid prototype

Booth with Throw the orcas sign and plushies at the return slide

Plush slide return

Top-down game view with a boat, orcas, and boat health bar

Playtesting

In playtests, people got the throw right away, but a few things kept falling flat. The boat still felt small for the size of the screen. Hits and near-misses were easy to miss in the noise of the room. And when the boat finally went down, the game slid into the outro before anyone had a beat to react.

I scaled the boat up, pushed the hit feedback harder, and added a short celebration before the end screen. The outro also got a clearer next step, something people could actually do once the round was over.

Person holding an orca plushie up toward the game screen

By the end it was a loud little walk-up game: throw a plush, dent the boat, free Baby J.

The game ended up causing a lot of noise, with people lining up to set the high score for number of boats destroyed.