Myosotis: Moving Souvenir

Myosotis is a program the FHNW initiated that develops games for the eldery with the goal of keeping people healthy and connecting the different generations. Playing games activates the brain and helps us stay mentally fit the same way as physical activity keeps our body fit. The other goal of the project it to connect the elderly with their children or grandchildren. Playing games together can be a great catalyst for conversation and a lot more fun especially for the younger generation.

Project Overview

  • Challenge

    Create a video game that takes the needs and preferences of the elderly into account and is fun to play.

  • Solution

    -Invest a lot of time into research and really get to know the target audience

    -Regularly test the current state of the game and implement the findings into the next iteration

  • Team

    2 Computer Science students

  • Time

    6 months

  • Tools

    Unity, Visual Studio, Illustrator

Task

The goal of this project was the creation of a game based on the existing game “BGC 2 - 4 Player Party Games - Basket“. The concept of the game is that there are numerous objects moving around the screen out of which the players have to search specific items and drag them to their respective corners. The goal was not to copy this existing game but to create a similar game with the difficulties of game design for the elderly in mind from the beginning.

Approach

Before anything else we went to a retirement home in Bern to test other games that were developed in the context of the Myosotis Project, as well as games from the App Store on an iPad. This gave us a first insight of the cognitive and physical abilities into our end users.

Over the course of about five months we created four prototypes, testing them in different retirement homes after each iteration. These tests were tremendously valuable, as we managed to find big flaws in our game design early on and changed the game accordingly. For example, the first prototype had the same mechanic as the "Basket" game, where the players had to drag the icons to their corners. We quickly realized that dragging was too difficult for most people and we decided to change it to simply tapping the respective icon which made the game a lot more accessible and more fun. 

Difficulties

In this project we faced multiple difficulties, beginning with the user base. As the final game was intended for use in retirement homes, we had to make sure it was not too fast or complicated. We had never developed anything for this demographic before, and we needed some adjustment time. While it was certainly something new and difficult, it was fascinating. Working with the elderly forced us to approach everything, from colour scheme to gameplay, in a different way than we were used to.

Another difficulty for us were the technologies used. As we had both never worked with Unity or C# before, we had trouble programming a fun and well functioning game. However, through this we did learn a lot and we were both proud of our achievement. 

Result

In the end, we developed a game with three different game modes.

Because of the advanced age of our end users we decided to go with a dark background and bright items. The items included in the game, like the eggs or the ham, were hand drawn by the daughter of the project owner and had been used in different games for the Myosotis project before. These drawings were popular with the elderly and we were asked to also use these drawings in our game, which complemented the dark background nicely. For all the user interfaces we went with a very simple, easy to understand navigation.

Game Mode 1: Schwarzes Loch

In the first game mode, called “Schwarzes Loch” (Black Hole), items spawn around the screen edges and move towards the center where they are destroyed. The goal is to find and touch a certain item. This item is different for every player. Each found item is worth one point and to win one needs 10 points.

Game Mode 2: Sammeln

The second game mode is called “Sammlen” (Collect) and consists of items floating around the screen. Again, each player has to look for a specific item and one wins for scoring 10 points. It is the closest to "BGC 2 - 4 Player Party Games - Basket" with the main difference being that the players only have to tap the item they are looking for, not drag them into the corner. 

Game Mode 3: Aufräumen

The third game mode is called “Aufräumen" (Clean Up). Similar to the mode “Sammeln”, items are floating around the screen. The difference is that this is meant as a team game mode. In the middle of the screen a black hole displays an item to be found. All the players have to search it and drag it into the center. The game is over after all items have been dragged into the center and the screen is “cleaned up” or if the time runs out.

Reflection

There are many things that went wrong in this project. Both of us struggled with the backend and we ended up rewriting a lot of code that never really fit perfectly together. The communication with the client was also not perfect and we didn’t define the exact goal of the project. This left both parties partially unsatisfied.

With all of that said, we still think the project was a success. The final test was a big hit and the participants didn’t want to stop playing our game. We managed to create different modes which enabled people with different capabilities to enjoy the game. From the young grandchildren, to elders with advanced dementia, everyone found a way to play and have fun.

Personally I learned a lot from this project. For instance not to assume that actions, that seem easy and natural to me, are easy to everyone. Inclusive design requires knowing exactly what the difficulties of the users are and no time spent on user research is wasted. In terms of management I learned that the planning phase should not be cut short. We could have avoided a lot of confusion and frustration, had we had a clear definition of the goals and scope of the project.