Kiara’s Functional Pokemon Arceus Ball Boasts Smoke, Spring, and a Single Leap

Kiara from Kiara’s Workshop has a habit of pulling game mechanics into the physical world and making them work. Her newest project targets the catch sequence unique to Pokémon Legends: Arceus. In that older setting a successful capture does not produce the familiar series of rapid shakes. The ball instead rises once into the air while a burst of smoke escapes from the top. A failure simply opens the shell and plays a short sound.

She began by replaying the game and focused on the animation. The goal was simple: one clean jump, some visible vapor, and the potential for the ball to open up on its own. Initially, the idea was to use pure mathematics, but early experimentation led to the decision to simply throw the object and see what happened. So she printed some light 100-gram shells, attached some threads, and assessed how high different springs could propel them across her workshop. After determining the appropriate height, she began constructing a plunger system that was as small as possible. A DC motor maintains a compressed spring in place until you click the release button, which sends the entire ball soaring into the air.

Getting any meaningful smoke out proved to be a chore, but tiny atomizer boards torn from small humidifiers were ultimately the solution. A sponge sits above the board, so when the mechanism activates, it is squeezed down and emits a small cloud of vapor thru certain holes in the top part. The impact is quite modest indoors and even more so outside, where the wind distributes it all over the place, but the principle is exactly what she was looking for in the game.


The hardware components of the ball are located in the bottom half, where a Seeed Studio board handles the logic and a DFPlayer Mini module stores the real game audio, which has been converted to MP3 files so that the failure sequence sounds exactly perfect. Power is delivered thru a little boost circuit, which raises the battery voltage to five volts. Everything fits neatly into custom-printed mounts and is kept in place by brass inserts and careful wiring. The two exterior shells simply screw together, allowing you to open the ball for maintenance or shell swaps without destroying the electronic components inside.


Printing was a true test of patience because the inside structure was built of tough but incredibly light ABS plastic. The wood filament for the outer shells, on the other hand, was an excellent choice because it sands and paints to give it a gloss that feels lot less plastic-y and more like the carved artifacts of the Hisui region. She had to go through approximately ten reprints of just the interior halves before the fit seemed consistent and not just a little weird. Sanding the wood filament made the workshop smell like true wood for a time. Using an airbrush to apply dark gray and shiny silver to the interior detailing was a wonderful touch, and she could then use acrylics and Rub ‘n Buff to give the exterior a worn-in appearance. Putting all of the parts together for the first complete machine took roughly eight hours in total.


When she eventually got it out in the open for some testing, she discovered there were still a few rough edges to work out. The spring remains visible after a leap, the ball rarely lands on its side and instead falls over, and grass can slow the ball sufficiently to clog the reload mechanism. The battery also became too hot over longer sessions, but the main sequence, which is button press, upward jump, small cloud of vapor, and the option to open with the appropriate sound effect, works perfectly. The shells are modular, so you may change the outer finish later if you like.
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