Tamagotchi Torture Chamber: this new device combines childlike fun with acts of sadism

Cornell University students have brought back a nostalgic little gem but with a sadistic twist.

You might remember the fun little digital pet, Tamagotchi, which gives you the feeling of having a companion without all the hard work of an actual pet.

Perhaps you’ve encountered the age-old issue of being so furious with something or someone that you wish to throw them at a wall, but are aware of the ethical implications of such an action.

Well, with this latest creation, “The Tamagotchi Torture Chamber,” you can now throw your digital pet at a wall without worry.

Much like the original digital creature, the students’ Tamagotchi Torture Chamber (TTC) has three buttons where you can interact with the digital pet by feeding it, cleaning it, and playing with it.

These three interactions will affect the pet's overall statistics. For example, if you feed the Tamagotchi, its health will increase, but so will its weight. If it gets too fat, it will die.

If the user neglects the digital pet, similar to that of a bunny rabbit, the creature will die, and the cute little critter will be replaced with a tombstone displaying “RIP.”

But don’t fret, you can simply grow another little guy by pressing any of the three buttons.

You might be thinking, ‘That’s all very normal,’ but the contraption only gets weirder.

The torture aspect involves a soft-body physics simulation and an accelerometer, which allows the user to throw the Tamagotchi against the walls of its digital prison.

“The creature is represented by a ring of vertices, with adjacent vertices connected by springs. Internal pressure, responsible for maintaining the creature's roughly spherical shape, is derived from its current surface area. Put together, we have a shape that can collapse on collisions but generally maintain its shape,” the students wrote in a post on GitHub.

By moving the device, you can knock your digital pet against walls, but if it slams against its enclosure too hard, its health will decrease.

Essentially, if you let its four stats (happiness, weight, food, and health) get to zero, then the pet will die.