trap masterz



what was my role?
i used and built off of the knowledge learned from my previous Arduino to Unity serial project here, and did all of the serial communication plus wiring of the buttons. just like with alien radio, there were a lot of initial hoops to jump across in order to minimize latency.  


what is it about?
trap masterz is a timing-based synchronous multiplayer experience where one user sets off traps with physical buttons, and another controls a first-person view to avoid these traps, and advance to the end. the person setting off the traps cannot see the screen of the other player, and only knows where they are with a series of LEDs. the cardboard cutout that the “trap master” interacts with is the same path that the trapped player traverses. taunting voice lines from the “trap master” cue up whenever the trapped player gets hit by a trap, manages to escape a trap, or survives until the end.


under the hood, this project works in a very similar way to alien radio, but the reliance on stable bi-directional serial communication was much more important here. the Arduino microcontroller sends which buttons are pressed to the Unity game engine in order to set off its corresponding trap. whenever the trapped player crosses a certain boundary where they come close enough to a trap, Unity sends which trap the player has approached, and the corresponding LED lights up to alert the trap master.


other details about the project can be found online here. in an ideal situation, we would have used buttons that had lights inside of them or placed the LEDs close to each corresponding button, but scheduling issues outside of my control prevented this :(


images - assembly


the last photo taken of the breadboard setup before the buttons were switched around, with all of the LEDs lit up by sending the same data that Unity sends to the Arduino microcontroller.
the first parts of wiring up the five buttons after they were mounted onto the cardboard. despite the tape reinforcing two of them, they were quite sturdy and stayed in place after 28+ different playthroughs.
the trap masterz board in its mostly final state, after the buttons were switched and the Arduino was secured to the bottom side of the cardboard. cardboard and map cutout were provided by another collaborator and button mounting / soldering was done by me. 

images - on location


two people playing trap masterz, right in the middle of a trap light being activated and buttons being pushed.
me playtesting the game once more with another person, activating the first trap as i get a light indicator from the first LED.
two more people playing trap masterz, with the trap master about to activate the third trap after its corresponding LED lit up.

©2026 isiah f