Game designer
Vogels! is a rehabilitation game that helps patients with a hemiplegia recover.
Vogels! won the Diamond Trophy Award at the NLGD Festival of Games 2010. It was nominated for the Dutch Game Awards in three categories and for the Wozzie Award, named after Steve ‘Apple Co-Founder’ Wozniak, and was featured at the Cross Care Cafe by Izovator.
The game, or rather the red bird in it, is controlled by a gravity-compensating supportive arm of which its position is tracked and ‘copied’ in-game. For each new game, the patient calibrates the game to fit the level of impairment of the patient. In-game, the patient flies, following a path, through various parts of the world and grabbing birds.
You can download the mouse version of Vogels! below. Please keep in mind that the mouse version of Vogels! does not give the same experience as with the Top/Help Arm Support for which the game was originally designed. As the main purpose of Vogels! was to rehabilitate patients with a hemiplegia, this mouse version only gives you an idea of the game and its atmosphere.
Vogels! was created for Focal Meditech as a proof of concept by Team KOMODO, five Utrecht School of the Arts students and two Utrecht University students. My role in the team was Game Design and Project Coordination.
My post-mortem & more pictures
Team KOMODO
Sandra da Cruz Martins - 2D Artist
Ronald Houtermans - 3D Environment Artist
Adriaan de Jongh - Game Designer & Project Coordinator
Francis Laclé - Programmer
Tim Remmers - 3D Character Artist
Eri Shiroyama - Audio Designer
Jens van de Water - Game Programmer
Team KOMODO together. Francis his birthday was a lot of fun
A side view of the supportive arm with which the game is controlled.
At the Festival of Games 2010, our game was a huge success!
Toru Iwatani, creator of Pac Man, observes our hardware while playing the game
Totally unexpected, we win the Diamond trophy, 'Best-of-show' award of the Festival of Games, together with an iPad! Picture by Zuraida Buter...