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Game Description
Body Relaxation self-care activity

Inspiration

I was inspired to create Tending to help people suffering with C-PTSD because of a friend of mine. She has C-PTSD and I see the big impact that it has on her life. When I looked into apps for people with C-PTSD, it seems like most research and tools are focused on people with PTSD.

However, what I found is that people with C-PTSD have different needs than those with PTSD, so I wanted to create Tending to focus primarily on helping those with C-PTSD.

What it does

C-PTSD, or Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, is a mental health condition that results from prolonged and repeated trauma. It is seen in childhood abuse, domestic violence victims, or those held in captivity, where they are in a traumatic situation that feels impossible to escape from.

Tending is not a replacement for professional mental health professionals. It is a tool for people who suffer from C-PTSD to perform self-care to help themselves ground and relax.

There are 5 different activities available in Tending. They are Body Relaxation, Grounding, Paced Breathing, Self Check-In, and Self Friend. Each activity was designed using modern research on C-PTSD and recommendations from mental health professionals. Each activity takes on average of 5 minutes or less to complete and it is available on Itch.io to play through the browser on PC or mobile.

How we built it

Tending was built in Unity using its 2D/UI tooling (uGUI) and C#, with each activity implemented as its own self-contained script so activities can be added or revised independently. A shared event system handles transitions between the main menu, activity selection, and individual activities. Almost all art and audio assets are free/licensed assets and they are credited on the game page. The app runs in-browser via WebGL and is hosted on Itch.io, so there's nothing to download or install.

Challenges we ran into

I wanted to build this with Unity to make it less intimidating. It could look and feel like just a simple game. But I don't have the artistic skill to make it look like I wanted it to. Right now it looks simple, but I wanted it to look like the player is a garden environment, but I think I will need help for that.

Another challenge is how to balance it being a game and a grounding tool. I removed almost all gamification elements because the goal is to have the player ground themselves and perform mental health self-care, not get caught up in a goal work. How to make something that people would want to return to is something I am still looking into.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The biggest accomplishment is the focus helping those with C-PTSD. The activities are based on C-PTSD research and no personal data is saved anywhere, so people who need help with their mental self-care can receive it without worrying about their data being shared or stored.

What we learned

Unity has its limits over a web app. With Unity, everything has to be on one screen and there is no space to scroll down like there would be on a web app. However, that did help me think of ways to make the app easy to use, so I think it ended up help drive development in the right direction for the app.

What's next for Tending

My next step is to get feedback from professionals to see if they could offer suggestions. Once that's done, I would work with an artist to improve the design, then get user feedback.

It would be great to be able to turn this into a tool that can be used to help with a variety of mental health issues.