Triage Story
Triage Story is a game developed over several months in between my second and third year of studies. Fundamentally, this is research designed to aid the training of nurses in taking mental health calls and improving their communication skills via gameplay. These calls range from casual check-ins with outpatients to crisis callers who require immediate attention. Following the clinical guidance provided by the team's doctor, we were able to develop several cases demonstrating the use of effective communication in nursing and is soon to be trialled as teaching software. If the research is proven to be successful, this software could be used as a digital game-based learning tool alongside physical teachings. The game was developed by myself and a lead programmer recruited from the year above me to take responsibility for task management and milestone deadlines. The team also consisted of two supervisors and a doctor for clinical guidance and accuracy.
The main game consists of three cases constructed by a collection of several real cases. Small scripts were provided to us by the client where we developed deep dialogue trees so that the user had plenty of options and different storylines to take. We used YarnSpinner “the friendly dialogue tool for Unity” to integrate our patient scripts. Yarn is a great tool as it features variable handling and support for voice clips. All pieces of the script from the perspective of the patient are voice acted, and one of the software's scripts features over 170 separate voice lines. The variable handling was useful to give the illusion that the patient remembers things and has internal emotions that the user must be aware of when choosing their dialogue. The patient’s emotion levels determine the user’s final score for that phone call where they would receive in-game medals for selecting options which provided the lowest score possible (score here represents the patient’s feelings).
My major role in this project was to support my lead programmer, who assigned me to work on most of the front-end features including the level select scene, some of the main game’s functionality (as seen in the first and second photos) and a lot of work on the patient’s scripts. Triage Story was fundamentally designed to educate using games for student nurses working on their professional communication, so there is a requirement for the gamified elements to be as fun as possible whilst also conveying the correct information relevant to the lesson’s contents.
Triage Story was a great opportunity for me to understand how to work towards client specifications, continue to use C# in a more advanced manner, understand the YarnSpinner tool, and to work within a professional team.