Jungle party: a game about loss and grief
Aline Elias Cardoso Verhalen, Vinícius Carvalho Pereira, Sílvia Amélia Bim, Ricardo Marinho de Mello de Picoli, Cristiano de Oliveira Maciel, Kamila Rios da Hora Rodrigues · 2021
Death is a theme discussed in various media, such as movies, games and books. In the real world it is hard for many people to talk about the theme, mostly with kids. A lot of researchers claim that hiding and masking the death can harm the process of grief and acceptance of the fact. To help in this dialogue, the present paper brings a proposal of a digital game, in the Storytelling genre, with the goals to talk with kids about losing by using a metaphor. The conception of the game adopted the SemTh approach and participatory design. The team was composed of two designers, two developers, three HCI professionals and one narrative professional. This paper presents a first cycle of the game prototyping, which was evaluated by one psychologist, one HCI professional and by the narrative professional.