If you heard the words “fishing rod sword,” you’d probably think it was something out of a Final Fantasy game. But the Ninja Track is actually a 3D-printed controller for Reel Blade, a game about fishing and swordplay.
The controller, developed by the National University of Singapore (NUS), transforms from a wobbly fishing rod to a rigid blade by flipping a switch. It was exhibited at the Tokyo Game Show 2015.
Reel Blade was created to test the Ninja Track. It’s about catching and then slicing up an octopus. It’s a little like Reel Fishing meets Fruit Ninja only with the one octopus—it is a hardware demo, after all.
Programmer Wei Kiat Leong addressed Reel Blade‘s simplicity:
Right now what we have is a small prototype game and we hope that maybe in the next year or so we could potentially produce a game for the arcade systems.
The Ninja Track, too, is still in development. Though NUS used 3D printing to create a prototype, the final version will be a more durable product. 3D printing is known for making fragile, breakable products. But even so, its prospects for game innovation seem endless.
