Dev Blog: Week 2 (2025/9/1 － 2025/9/5)

Team Alignment and Design Priorities

Our early September discussions marked a shift from broad exploration toward more focused design planning. The team aligned on a key principle: reducing frustration must be at the center of our design goals, particularly when considering Parkinson’s patients and elderly users. We also debated how much physical exercise should be embedded into gameplay in order to balance therapeutic benefit with accessibility and enjoyment.

Brainstorming generated a variety of possible themes—including farming, organizing, puzzles, and even card-inspired mechanics—that may support both mobility and cognitive engagement. These options will be refined through rapid prototyping and user feedback.

Technical Setup and Engine Choice

We confirmed Unity HDRP as the development engine. This choice was driven largely by artistic direction: our artists are eager to leverage HDRP’s advanced lighting and rendering pipeline to create naturalistic visual effects and atmospheric environments. At the same time, we remain mindful of potential optimization challenges, especially in the absence of low-end PCs for stress testing. Simulated performance testing will be explored later in the semester.

Prototype planning also began around the core input systems that will define how the shoes interact with gameplay:

• Path and foot tracking
• Duration-based actions
• Foot lifting
• Stance detection

Validating these systems will establish the foundation for future game mechanics.

Client Consultation with Magnes AG

A milestone moment came when Conrad from Magnes AG visited the ETC and provided a live demonstration of the NuShu shoes. He introduced the company’s vision—helping people with mobility impairments, particularly Parkinson’s patients experiencing freezing of gait—and showed how vibration feedback can encourage longer steps and more consistent movement.

Key design insights included:

• Safety and Integrity: Games must avoid unsafe activities and prevent “cheating.”
• Adaptability: Difficulty should scale to user ability, offering challenge without discouragement.
• Accessibility: Interfaces must be intuitive for older generations with limited gaming background.
• Emotional Sensitivity: Mechanics should prevent unnecessary frustration or unhealthy competitiveness.

Conrad also outlined three promising gameplay directions for exploration:

1. Reaction-based experiences that respect input latency.
2. Memory-driven challenges combining stepping with cognitive recall.
3. Balance-focused exercises using posture and weight shifting.

The session reinforced vibration as both a cue and reward mechanism and highlighted potential collaboration opportunities with research partners such as the Physical Intelligence Lab.

Next Steps

With foundational insights and our first hands-on demonstration complete, the team is now preparing for the upcoming 1/4s presentations. Efforts will focus on refining early concepts, drafting user survey questions, and prototyping input systems to demonstrate feasibility.