It may be because we recently replayed two Borderlands games back to back, but a YouTuber has made a Nerf blaster that would fit perfectly into the world of Pandora.

James Bruton has created a custom 3D printed blaster that launches the lager Nerf rockets (these Fortnite-themed ones). But this isn’t just a dumb launcher as the rocket is guided to its target.

While we initially thought this would take the form of a wire connected to the rocket, similar to the real world wire-guided missile, there’s a more futuristic guidance system here.

The rocket is instead mounted to one of those small, cheap drones you can usually find for a pittance online or in shopping centres. It’s flown to the target using head tracking courtesy of an Arduino system inside of a custom headpiece.

Using rubber bands to launch the rocket out of the blaster the user can then guide it to a target by simply looking at it.

Adding to the Borderlands feel here is the oversized blaster itself which very much reminds us of Hyperion with its larger surfaces and flat panels.

As expected this whole system is a little janky and actually steering into a target with head movement is difficult. That being said, having shot a lot of Nerf blasters ourselves in the past, many of them aren’t accurate out of the box either, so at least that’s consistent.

Interestingly Nerf has made its own guns in the past that try to do some funky stuff after the dart leaves the barrel. The most recent of these was a blaster that the company claimed could shoot around corners.

As you saw in the video, and from its title, this project was sponsored by Fiverr. The gig working platform has become a goldmine of YouTube content even when it isn’t directly sponsoring videos.

There’s an entire genre of videos on YouTube where creators enlist the help of people on Fiverr for all manner of projects. The hook to these videos is that your results differ wildly depending on what you’re willing to pay, and comparison videos between cheap and expensive work are always interesting.

Some of our favourites of this type of video is from the channel Cold Ones which has used Fiverr for animation and T-shirt designs. Both of those videos are very much not safe for work due to language so save it for later if you’re still in the office.