HandyFeet: social bodily play via split control of a human puppet's limbs

Players sharing control of each other's bodies offers a promising direction for delivering engaging collaborative experiences in digital physical games. We present HandyFeet - a movement based game platform in which two players compete to most effectively direct the body of a third player. This third person becomes like a puppet that has two masters. The two directing players take turns making hand signals to guide one of the puppet player's legs. The puppet-person is prevented from seeing both their own legs and the floor, and so is dependent upon the directors' instructions for navigating the physical environment. To further the development of movement based games involving players surrendering or sharing control of their own bodies, we offer five themes that arose from analysing our initial play-tests.