Simone Fontana’s 3D Printed Sports Games Print in No Time & Create Hours of Fun

Functionality is a big key in helping 3D printing gain mainstream adoption, not just by large companies, designers, and hobbyists, but by common everyday people who want to fabricate their own products from the comfort of their own homes. Over the past two years, we have seen desktop 3D printing go from a space full of functionless doodads to one filled with a plethora of fun, useful, and totally functional products. If you want a set of pliers, you can download the design and print them out in a matter of hours. If you want a toy for your kids, the same is true there.

One designer, named Simone Fontana, has a knack for creating fun and entertaining games that can be downloaded for free on MyMiniFactory and printed on most desktop 3D printers. Back in April, we did a short piece on some of Fontana’s work, which included a game called “Finger Rugby.” Since that time, he has been adding more sports games to his collection, most of which take very little time to print, yet can entertain you for hours on end.

Other than the aforementioned Finger Rugby game, which Fontana tells us is his personal favorite, he has also created three other sports games: Finger Hockey, Finger Penalty Shootout, and the most comprehensive of them all, Football Pinball. All of these games bring something a little different to the desktop, kitchen floor, or whatever your desired playing surface may be.

“Before designing the objects I figure out the sizes of the pieces and then try to figure out how to design them support free,” Fontana tells 3DPrint.com. “I prefer designing support free because people with less experience with machines can print the objects easily. The trickiest was the goal of the Finger Hockey because I had figured out the right pattern for the net to be support free.”

He did it though, and Finger Hockey turned out amazingly well. While Finger Rugby is his favorite of the games, he says the most challenging to play is the Finger Penalty Shootout game because it is so difficult to hit the ball at just the right angle.

Our favorite game design by Fontana is the Football Pinball, which is exactly what it sounds like; a game that combines pinball with football/soccer. It’s a two player game in which one player “kicks” the ball using the pinball flippers, while the other player defends the goal by moving the goalkeeper to try and keep the ball from entering the net. It is a tremendously unique game which has an equally tremendous fun-factor to it.

All of these games are entirely free to download. Finger Hockey takes around 330 minutes to print, as it is composed of 5 separate objects within 4 STL files, while Finger Rugby and Finger Penalty Shootout only take around 110 minutes to print. The largest of the games, Football Pinball, takes over 40 hours to print out, and some additional time to assemble, but it will certainly be well worth it once complete.

What do you think about these unique 3D printable sports games? Have you downloaded and printed any yet? Discuss in the 3D Printed Sports Games forum thread on 3DPB.com.