Design Brief
“Design and fabricate an 80s style arcade game based on an assigned film from the 80s.”
Assigned Movie: The Goonies
The Goonies is an adventure film that follows a group of kids who discover an old pirate treasure map and embark on a dangerous journey to uncover hidden treasure and save their neighborhood. Along the way, they encounter deadly traps, underground caves, and the Fratelli crime family.
The game produced during this project - Escape The Cave - was inspired by the iconic Bone Organ scene in the film, where the Goonies must play the correct sequence of musical notes to survive the traps within the cave. Similarly, “Escape The Cave” challenges participants to solve puzzles and complete tasks under pressure in order to safely navigate the cave and escape before time runs out.
Ideas Considered:
Approach
After multiple rounds of design and testing, the approach chosen was to combine multiple initial concepts in to the one seen below:
CAD Drawings
Game Description
The aim of the game is to play four different musical notes in the correct order played to the user by aiming and shooting a ping pong ball at four different targets.
The game begins when the player presses the start button, triggering audio instructions that announce the target beam sequence. Using a joystick-controlled servo motor, the player aims and fires ping pong balls through a flywheel shooter to break the beams.
The system uses a pair of Arduino boards communicating via I2C: the master handles game logic, audio playback, and sequence generation, while the slave manages beam detection, motor control, and targeting.
Players have 60 seconds to complete the correct sequence. If they hit them all in order they win - they lose if time runs out or the order is incorrect.
Project Code
Using existing internet resources and a systematic debugging process the code linked below was created to control the Arduino boards for the game, which were then wired and tested.
Final Game
