FietsR is a game designed to help ease the pain of rehabilitation of kids with cerebral palsy that have undergone surgery.
Kids with cerebral palsy suffer from a brain injury that is caused by an oxygen deficiency at birth. This injury often induces spasms in the children. In a growing child these spams can cause certain muscles to shorten which leads to abnormalities in the legs. The children can undergo a surgery to correct their distorted legs. The surgery is heavy and leaves the child in pain afterwards. They have to rehabilitate the use of their legs on a medical home-trainer. To ease the monotony and pain of this process we’ve created a game these kids can play while rehabilitating on the machine.
FietsR is a game where players move along a road by paddling the real-life hometrainer they are exercising with. Along the way the player encounters several challenges. They may have to balance on a small platform by carefully applying equal pressure with both legs. Sometimes they go uphill, which means they have to put more force into paddling, as gravity is pulling them down.
We also developed an app the children could use while waiting for their therapy session to start. In this app they can customize the character they use in the game and spend the points they earned in previous sessions. This should motivate and hype up the children before their session start. We were giving them agency over the game they were playing.
