2021-07-07 ---------- this game was being played by dream jori and friends. he was trying to get me to play, but i was busy with something else. players are competing for control of a heavy puck on a giant air hockey table. players wear air hockey pucks on their feet, making movement rather difficult. each player has a backpack mounted air tank, which can be refilled at their home nest, or goal. the tank powers a metal wand or hockey stick that blows a jet of air out the tip with some force. players must wear eye protection! if a wand contacts another wand or the puck, its capacitance changes and it is electronically disabled, forcing the player to go become a hungry hippo, that is to say they are tethered by an air hose to a nest on the sides of the rink. it is the hungry hippo's job to claim the puck and bring it back to his nest, at which point he may cut the cord and return to regular play. or, the air hippo may simply remain as such, because having a hose has a strategic advantages for the team, as it does not run out of air like a backpack does. hippo nests are filled up in a deterministic order, starting from the middle, then the corners. the air hose length is half the rink width. the rink itself is rectangular, but short enough that the hose arcs overlap a bit, creating a zone of contention if the nests are controlled by opposing teams, or a zone of extra power if they are controlled by the same team. pushing the puck around is difficult due to the lack of control from air wands. one strategy for setting up to take a shot at the enemy goal is to gradually spin up the puck by blowing on it tangentially until it has some rotational speed, then pushing down on the rim to jam it into the hard floor surface of the rink, where friction suddenly takes hold at one point on the rim and converts its rotational momentum into translation. then the puck's direction must be corrected to guide it into the goal. generally speaking, momentum tends to be projected from the sides of the rink, because players can push off the walls, and that is where the air hoses are, although complex square dance style choreography is possible in principle.