While looking and researching games for children and adults that are played in different kinds of settings, one game caught my interest, which is the ”strong man game” and can often be found at fairs during summer time.
This game tests someone’s overall strength, and as this is the purpose of my project (to find a game that can be fun and enhance the power of the hand for stroke survivors), I was thinking of ways of how to adapt this so it is suitable for a stroke survivor.
The next thought that came immediately to my mind was the game I was given when I was a teenager to train my breathing, (as I used to struggle with asthma). This led me to the thought of creating this game to train someone’s hand instead of testing the strength of the lungs or the arm.
As mentioned in previous blogs, stroke survivors often use a ball they press to train their strength. What was particularly investigated through interviews was the fact that stroke survivors often don’t find the motivation to use their objects to get better.
Just as I had my motivation game in which you had to breathe in as much as possible and try to make all balls inside the pipe fly, a game in which the stroke patient has to squeeze the ball as much and often as possible to compress it to a certain point, just like in the ”test your strength” game, would be interesting to create.
The ball could be connected to a small tube and the game could show how far and strong the patient is on this specific day. This could motivate the patient to make it to a higher score the next day, but will also show if they are weaker than the day before.
(Both images above were created with an AI platform in order to represent the nonexisting idea)
Additionally to that, there are two similar games which could be transformed and adapted which are ”Catch the light”, as well as a hammer game in which children have to hammer a ball or object as soon as it pops up. This could likewise be transformed into a small tablet that the patient could hold in their hand and press either on the light or press down a tiny object as soon as the light comes on or the object arises. In this case, it would be more motivating and engaging for the user, and would persuade them to continue, which a simple ball would not do. This would ultimately train the fingers.
Having a phone-sized game, just like the image below but possible to use by hand would be best in order to also press proper buttons, but an adaption could be made for iPads or phones as well.
Below there are again AI-generated images to represent my idea
A further idea would be transforming a rubber band game into something engaging. A board could get laid out with little pins on it and as soon as a light appears on the board with a certain color, the player would need to pick to right color of the rubber band that matches the color of what the board is showing and this direction would need to get follow and the player would need to stretch the rubber band from one pin to the other. This could work with a timer so the player would get motivated to work with the hand as fast as possible before putting on the next rubber band.