Under the supervision of Professor D.S. Cohen, the Games for Good program is centered on game design for education, research, and public health. Our goal for the Spring 2025 semester was to develop a game to assist stroke survivors in rehabilitation and gather data for the UT Neurorehabilitation and Biomechanics Lab with the assistance of Dr. Hao Yuan Hsiao.
In order to ensure that the project targeted multiple areas of rehabilitation, and that the games could fit the needs of as broad a demographic of survivors as possible, we conducted interviews, searched academic databases, and developed "user stories." From there, we split into five teams to develop themed "minigames" that could be accessed through a central hub similar to the Wii Fit games.
Role: Sound Design, Music
Our minigame, currently titled "Scuba Scavenge," is intended to be a low-stakes and more meditative experience, as our surveys indicated that many survivors found that games they previously enjoyed became overstimulating after their stroke.
Players control the diver character, and use simple leg lift and weight shifting exercises to move around the environment. There are simple collectibles to guide players around the map, but there are no time limits or fail states.
While each minigame is developed separately, the end goal of developing games for a central hub meant that each team's contributions must be merged at the end of the project. I coordinated with other members of the tech team, as well as the audio leads for the other minigames, to ensure that teams' contributions didn't conflict. This included proper filename conventions, working in separate Wwise Work Units and Soundbanks, and coordinating changes to the Git repository. This is the first major project that I've done with more than two Wwise users, so I had to figure out standards to use across teams.
One of Professor Cohen's goals for this project was to utilize the Lab for Immersive Media's Captury motion capture system as the controller for our games. This allowed us to use motion input without having our users put on markers or suits. However, any live testing would have to be done on site during typical business hours. In order to test the games at home, we had to use pre-recorded clips played back through Captury Replay, which made testing changes slightly more complicated.
Scuba Scavenge - Credits:
D.S. Cohen - Professor, Project Lead
Hao Yuan Hsiao - Research Partner
Sarina Varela - TA
Helena Bjeletich - Tech Lead
Schuyler Burke - Artist, Producer, UI/UX
Dominic Dayton - Artist
Dariela Hernandez - Artist
Anna Roberts - Artist
Maithanh Nguyen - Artist
Ben Gentry - Audio