Table Tennis, or ping pong, is fun as it is but add music and a new level of competition and it gets a whole lot more interesting.

Ping Pong FM is a unique take on Ping Pong created by Mark Wheeler, a designer from Seattle. The ping pong paddles on Wheeler’s table are connected up with microphones to detect when the ball is hit. Using a uniquely designed app a track will play alongside your game, speeding up and slowing down with the rhythm of your game.

The aim of the game is to keep the rally going fast enough that the track plays in it’s normal tempo, every slip slowing it down. When you miss the music stops and you’re responsible for pausing the party, so the stakes are much higher than just any old game of ping pong.

Speaking on how they created the game the Ping Pong FM team said: “After considering several approaches, we found that placing contact microphones within each of the paddles was the most effective solution to keep track of the game. These are used to ‘listen’ for the wooden paddles reverberating when the ball hits.

“A computer running the game app, built using openFrameworks, advances based on the Player ID. This app keeps track of the pace of play and adjusts the speed of the song appropriately as well as re-syncing to the beginning of a bar after longer slow-downs.”

Check it out in action with a selection of the songs that work with Ping Pong FM in their awesome video below: