Flourish

The company I was working for was approached by a biomedical tech company with a question: 'Can you make a VR game that makes Physiotherapy fun?'

I created a pitch where the repetitive exercises required in physio transformed into magical spells. The concept was as users literally healed their bodies, this would transform into magical energy that would heal the broken land around you.

The core inspiration was walking through my local community garden trying to think of a concept. Thinking of how these gardens grow and transform the land into something beautiful.

The client loved the proposal, so we set out to achieve what we hoped would be an experience that would encourage users to continue to return to physio to engage with this experience again.

I worked closely with our narrative director to establish a basic story structure, including characters that would help guide the user through the experience. Each of these characters represented a common reason people either don't go to or stop doing physio. As the user progresses, they overcome their own thoughts and are encouraged to continue their own health journeys.

The art director and I established a look that we felt inviting and would run on the target proprietary hardware. It was important to me that it looked like a fun and whimsical place but did not look too childish as our target audience was not children for this product.

One thing that was really important is that the game has the ability to be customizable by physiotherapists both before the game starts and during a patient session. I designed a 'playlist'-like system which allowed therapists to swap in different exercises as needed.