If your child is showing off disturbing sociopathic tendencies, there's really only one gift you can get for them: the Tamagotchi Torture Chamber. Created by Cornell University design students, this somewhat unsettling product combines the bones of a Tamagotchi digital pet with real-time physics simulation handled through a Raspberry Pi, giving your new best friend a realistic amount of squish and the ability to be thrown about its virtual enclosure.
Really, the best way to understand it is seeing it yourself:
According to the team's documentation page:
When you first power on a new Tamagotchi Torture Chamber, a default initial state is persisted in external memory (FRAM). However, on subsequent boots, your pet's previous state is automatically loaded so you can pick up right where you left off!
Using the three buttons located on the side of the TTC, you can interact with your pet! Feed it, play with it, or clean it. Your pet has four stats: weight, food, happiness, and health. Feeding your pet increases its food meter as well as its weight. Playing with your pet increases its happiness meter and decreases its weight. Cleaning your pet increases its health, but decreases its happiness. If you let any of these stats get too low (or too high, for weight), your pet will start crying. If all of these stats fall to 0, or you overfeed your pet, it will die. Not to worry, though, because pressing any button after your pet dies will reset it.
Of course, you may also interact with the pet by knocking it around its enclosure. If your pet slams against any wall too hard, it will look dizzy and its health will decrease. Tilt the TTC to slide your pet around and watch it squish up against the walls.
Our project was motivated by our desire to create a silly little game that was portable and a little twisted.
I'd say that's a resounding "mission accomplished."
