LAKE VENTURE

For this project we had the challenge to design and implement one or more Mirror Therapy exercises in Virtual Reality, specifically the Oculus Quest. We had to perform research into exactly what Mirror Therapy is and why it works for chronic pain patients. We had to look into the exact types of exercises that are performed as part of Graded Motor Imagery and how they can be increased in intensity. We had to then translate these exercises to Virtual Reality. The final product is a 3D game named “Lake Venture” where the player is a scuba diver. Their mission is to swim around in a volcanic lake and collect artifacts. These could be gems, crystals, or even tribal masks. As they swim around in the water, they will see sea life (fishes, eels, octopi) and sea plants (seaweed). They also must watch out for a timer that is running. At the end of the timer, they can roam around the lake freely.

The target audience of the game are people with phantom pain and are missing one of their arms. Of course, it can be played by anyone, should they want to. We have done research on mirror therapy and decided to implement it in our game. You play the game with one controller in one hand. People who are missing an arm, hold the controller in the intact arm. They can move forward by making swimming movements. In-game, the player will see two arms moving, including the missing arm. There we imitate mirror therapy, where the patient moves one arm, but sees the other arm making the same movements. The purpose of this is to trick the brain into thinking the missing hand/arm is still there and resulting from that, relieving phantom pain.

This concept lets the player perform swimming exercises by moving, pushing and pulling their controller hand (in-game) in an increased intensity so that the player can move faster/slower in the game whilst keeping the timer in mind. Performing these exercises (swimming movement, faster/slower hand movement while performing swim movement and so on) lets the player mimic the exercises performed as part of Graded Motor Imagery (Mirror Therapy) and the intensity of the exercises is correlated to how fast/slow their hands move outside VR.