A Mouse Trap Game Made with Actual Mouse Traps

We’re in the middle of something of a board game renaissance right now, and all kinds of intricate games are being developed and released regularly. Want to act out your fantasy of portraying Ripley as you and your friends fight aliens aboard a derelict space ship? There’s a game called Nemesis for you. Want to compete against your friends in a movie trivia game themed after a defunct rental chain? Blockbuster: The Game is perfect. If, however, you like a little bit more physical danger in your gaming experiences, Robin Baumgarten's literal Mouse Trap game provides some terrifying inspiration.

This project is, of course, lampooning the classic Hasbro Mouse Trap game that was one of the first to really bring dazzling mechanics to board gaming. That was originally released way back in 1963, and forced players to collaborate and build a Rube Goldberg machine-esque death trap for mice — and then pitted those players against each other. Baumgarten's Mouse Trap is quite a bit simpler, but the stakes are so much higher. A group of real mouse traps are arranged on a table and armed. Players have to tap the indicated mouse trap trigger while trying to avoid setting if off.

Aside from the mouse traps, the only hardware being used is an LILYGO T-Display ESP32 board (with built-in IPS LCD), a strip of individually-addressable WS2812B RGB LEDs, and a touch sensor. The LED strip sits in front of the row of mouse traps, and is used to indicate which trap the player is supposed to touch. The touch sensor is connected to a point on the trigger of each trap. The ESP32 was programmed in Arduino to tell the players which trap to push and determine when the touch sensor registers a tap. If it’s not obvious, you probably shouldn’t actually play this with your finger — it is possible for a mouse trap to break a finger—and should instead use some sort of stick like Baumgarten is in the video.