Haven’t I seen this before?

Continuing on with our ten-part series about how health games can utilize great game techniques seen in mainstream games, like those presented in an article by the Casual Games Association, we step right into part 2 and thus Great Game Tenet #2: a great health game is original, but familiar.  Innovative is what we all strive for, but at the end of the day, the player must be able to recognize the goals of the game and how to play the game.  Don’t make the player feel like they’re in a foreign land.  The time it takes a player to learn how to play the game can take away much of the content delivery time (or distract the player entirely from understand what they are learning).

Health games that do it well.

The first health game I’d like to mention with that “Haven’t I played something like this before?” feel is Snack Dash by the UK  School Food Trust.  I found this to be a fun little online nutrition game because of its almost too close for comfort Sonic the Hedgehog gameplay.  Snack Dash is all about speed, and the main character even has Sonic-styled spiky hair.  The game mechanic is to collect as many healthy eating points as possible while avoiding the “bad guys” and keeping up enough energy to speed through the course.  Don’t collect enough food and water, you go really slow and can’t jump very high.  Collect energy-packed food and it’s full speed ahead.  A nice game mechanic and content match.

Another great example  of a health game using a familiar game mechanic is HopeLab’s Re-Mission.  This cancer treatment game uses the always popular first person shooter game mechanic where the player must use a fully armed nanobot named Roxxi to kill malignant body cells.  Everyone loves a shoot ‘em up game, and this one comes with an added clinically-proven health bonus.  What more could a health gamer ask for?

Recommended readings.

• healthGAMERS What Makes a Great Health Game Great – Part 1
• What’s a Game Mechanic? on Monster’s Blog – How to Create a Casual Game for Health: Part 3
  
• HopeLab’s publications page