Flail

Flail was my senior thesis at Say Si, built in Unity with a Kinect. I wanted to test an asymmetrical game setup: one person used a controller, while the other used their whole body.

In the gallery, people quickly started dodging, jumping, and leaning in public to avoid damage from the other player.

How It Played

One player controlled a small helicopter with limited lives. They could fly around the screen and shoot projectiles.

The second player stood in front of a Kinect. Their body was captured, rigged, and mapped to a collider, letting them act as the antagonist without holding a controller. Instead of pressing buttons, they had to physically dodge, jump, lean, and move around the gallery space.

What Worked

The body-controlled player became part of the performance. Gallery visitors usually started with small movements, then got bolder once they realized the game was reading their body clearly enough to punish or reward those movements.

That told me the interaction was readable. The Kinect tracking, collider mapping, and Unity scene logic were all serving the same thing: two players with very different controls trying to outsmart each other in front of a crowd.

Technical Notes

• Built in Unity.
• Used Kinect body tracking for the full-body player.
• Mapped the tracked body to collider behavior in-game.
• Designed around a controller-versus-body asymmetry.
• Showcased in an art gallery for an event in San Antonio, TX at Say Si.