Watch an Overwatch streamer control Genji using only fidget spinners

The streamer that controlled Winston using nothing but bananas has put together another ludicrous creation: a fidget-spinner controller for Genji. You can see it working in the clip above, where Rudeism manages to de-mech a D.Va and kill the opposition's Genji just by twirling away. If you want to see more, the full stream is here.

He explained how it works in this Reddit thread—basically, each fidget spinner sits on an encoder that turns their movement into signals and connects to a circuit board that sits underneath the piece of wood shown in the clip. The encoders can detect which way the spinners are rotating, and whether or not they're being pushed down (like a regular button).

There's two for WASD, two for aiming (horizontal and vertical axes), and one for left and right click. By pushing the spinners, Rudeism can trigger Genji's abilities, jump, or ask for healing. It's obviously quite clunky (a bit like me when I'm controlling Genji on a mouse and keyboard, as a matter of fact), but the fact he was able to even land a shot is mighty impressive.

For more wacky controller schemes, here's Rudeism beating Dark Souls 3's first boss using a dance pad.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.