RECHARGE

Recharge is a two-part project: a gaming app and a set of wearable devices consisting of wristbands, a chest-plate, and ankle bands.

The wearables act as sensors that listen to input from players to attack and block. The app serves the figurative heart of the player’s avatar, and shows how many health points and “mana points” remain. Players “attack” other players by striking any number of physical poses.

The phone, housed in the chest-plate, calculates how many times gamers get attacked and reflects it on the screen.

Yu designed Recharge to bring the battle that gamers use to have in the virtual world into the real world, reintroducing a sense of physical play into the lives of digital natives.