Developed and released in September of 2008, Whack-A-Snack is a children’s museum exhibit installed at the Explorium of Lexington in Lexington, KY. The Explorium approached us asking for an interactive exhibit that got kids moving and thinking about smart eating choices. Developed in partnership with Enomalies (Bill Gregory), Whack-A-Snack has been a tremendous hit with museum patrons.
We developed a custom, low cost “touch” screen for use in Whack-A-Snack. Six piezo-electric sensors are positioned around the border of the screen and sandwiched between the bottom large piece of acrylic and the six individual acrylic panels on top. This design allows the player to register hits on six different areas on the screen while still viewing the action on the display. All at a reasonably cheap price with much more robustness as compared to normal high res touchscreen solutions.
The object of the game is to ‘whack’ the unhealthy food and withhold punishment on the food that’s good for you. Whacking bad food gives you more “Calories Burned”, while whacking good food deducts from your total. The kids can choose from one of three difficulties, the hardest of which is best attempted with a partner; otherwise, you’ll be getting a real workout trying to smack all the bad food that appears on the screen.
Whack-A-Snack is a testament to the robustness of our designs, as it’s been running with only minor downtime for 4 years despite undergoing daily beatings by excited and enthralled kids and adults!
