Dismental: a game for social engagement in pandemic times

The year 2020 started with a corona-virus outbreak. As a result, many people are no longer allowed to leave their home, which leads to a heavy reduction in social contact. At the same time, everyone wants entertainment at home so many people are playing games. Dismental is a social game explicitly designed and developed for this context. The game aims at creating a fun experience and con- viviality by requiring players to communicate and work together to complete a number of mini games to defuse a bomb (see Figure 1). Dismental consists of two types of mini-games, for 2 up to 8 players: the first type involves two active players, and requires skillful communication, coordination and keeping your head cool; the second type involves all players and is aimed at fast reactions and chaotic situations. Completing a series of mini-games within a set time limit will successfully defuse the bomb. All players use a variety of gestures captured by their webcam to interact with the mini-games. The game was created with the Godot1 game engine. The codebase is available on GitHub, and a trailer can be found on YouTube.

@InProceedings { BKGDJWKAB20,
  author       = "Brouwer, Gees and Klop, Pepijn and Gieling, Onno and Duifs, Jonas and Janssen, Jeroen and Werff, Kevin van der
                  and Kegeleers, Marie and Alderliesten, David and Bidarra, Rafael",
  title        = "Dismental: a game for social engagement in pandemic times",
  booktitle    = "FDG 2020 - International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games",
  month        = "sep",
  year         = "2020",
  note         = "Games and Demos Track",
  url          = "http://graphics.tudelft.nl/Publications-new/2020/BKGDJWKAB20"
}