Tasting Victory: Why Gamers Are Hacking Taste and Smell
In Planet Licker, a single-player game originally created over 48 hours at the Ludum Dare game jam last August, players guide a pixelated monster by physically licking ice pops. The inch-and-a-half-tall pops sit in tiny metal cups that are wired to a Makey Makey circuit board in the game’s controller. When players hold the controller and touch their tongue to any of the three brightly colored pops in it, the action controls the on-screen monster. Licking a specific flavor—grapefruit-honey, pink lemonade, or beet, for instance—guides the monster to the nearest digitized ice planet corresponding with that pop’s color.
Other technologies aimed at making games smellier and tastier include National University of Singapore’s “electronic lollipop,” which sends electrical signals to the tongue to give users the sensation of tasting something bitter, sweet, salty, or sour, and the FeelReal VR, a mask that fits over the nose and mouth and connects to a virtual-reality headset like an Oculus Rift or Sony Morpheus. FeelReal can deliver up to seven different scents, including flowers, meat, and burning rubber, and for $300, users can create their own customized smells.
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