View article

In the area of dementia care, Serious Games are seen as an opportunity to boost cognitive capabilities and to stabilize the ability to independently perform Activities of Daily Living (ADLs). We developed a Serious Game based on the popular boardgame chess to target the elderly and dementia patients through incorporating dementia relevant requirements. We analyzed multiple chess variants, which use a smaller board size with less pieces to reduce the game complexity. This results in a new chess version, that helps players to understand the core mechanics of the game and allows them to get into the flow of playing with chess figures. Included are different training scenarios as well as a virtual opponent, that adjusts towards the cognitive skill level of a dementia patient. The game’s visual appearance can be tailored to any person and preference by e.g. adjusting the board color theme to address color blindness …