Launder Money, Get A Divorce, Slaughter A Lamb, Touch Up An Alien

Will Noble
By Will Noble Last edited 109 months ago
Launder Money, Get A Divorce, Slaughter A Lamb, Touch Up An Alien

Launder vast amounts of money from the City, before getting a divorce, and escaping on a short break — all in the same room. Novelty Automation is the games arcade with a difference. There's not a cocky blue hedgehog or speeding Italian plumber in sight at this new Covent Garden funfair — but instead wry, W Heath Robinson-style machines that are the handiwork of engineer and cartoonist Tim Hunkin, and his fellow inventors.

Novelty Automation opened on Thursday, and we've picked out a handful of the gizmos we recommend you try out.

Get a divorce

This divisive game involves duelling with your significant other over possession of a house. Maybe one to leave till after Valentine's Day,

Poke an extra-terrestrial

In films and newspaper reports, it always seems to be the aliens doing all the prodding. Here's a rare opportunity for you to poke various bits of an ET, including its pleasure centre, its pain centre, and its reproductive organs (which surely falls under the previous two categories?).

Settle the fate of a lamb

In this disturbing wheel of (mis)fortune, you decide whether a cuedey-widdle-wamb finds a safe and friendly home for life, or is transformed into Sunday roast.

Muck about with plutonium

The My-Nuke personal nuclear reactor encourages you to load up a reactor with plutonium fuel pellets, before eating the lethal waste product. As the voiceover's preamble claims, very little can go wrong.

Filch some wonga

'Machine of the month' is Money Laundering — a game of nerves in which you've got to launder cash from the City of London using a 'Global Investment Magnet', and avoiding all the nosey financial regulators.

Other machines in the collection allow you to go on a very, very short break, get frisked by a randy pair of rubber gloves, and have an expert decide whether or not something is art. We have a feeling this is one novelty act that's going to stick around.

Novelty Automation, 1a Princeton Street, WC1R 4AX, is open Wednesday-Saturday. Entrance is free, but fill your pockets with shrapnel to feed the machines.

Last Updated 13 February 2015