E-Paper Handheld Plays AI-Generated Text Adventures
A maker has built a battery-powered handheld that runs choose-your-own-adventure stories on an e-paper screen. The device uses Google's Gemini to generate its stories.
Source: Hackaday
Choose-your-own-adventure books were among the first media to take on game-like features in the computer age. Jeremy Ngai set out to carry that experience onto a dedicated handheld device that uses an e-paper display.
The device pairs a 2.9-inch e-paper screen with a rotary encoder for input and an RGB LED that can set a mood during the story. According to the project, a single charge provides an estimated 20 hours of play. The hardware uses a custom circuit board and a 3D-printed enclosure, which give it a polished finish.
On first boot, the user connects the device to WiFi through a captive portal, as with other ESP32 products. Once online, the handheld requests a generated story from Gemini. The source material suggests that the code could instead pull from a library of human-written stories, and it mentions a possible port of Zork as an example. The full build files are published on GitHub for anyone who wants to make one.
The project also points to other e-paper gaming ideas, such as an e-ink Game Boy-style device, or a design with a separate screen and controller.
