Ecuador, Peru, and Colombia develop video games against depression and anxiety

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Students from Peru, Colombia, and Ecuador create video games against depression and anxiety, inspired by ideas of children and adolescents from schools of the educational association Fe y Alegría, reported in Lima the promoters of this initiative.

The video games were created during the “Game Jam: starting over”, an international hackathon that brought together professionals and students of the video game industry from the Peruvian school Toulouse Lautrec, the Colombian Fundación Universitaria del Área Andina, and the Ecuadorian Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador.

Toulouse Lautrec said this December 21, 2021, to Efe, in a statement, that, in alliance with Fe y Alegría of Peru, five video games were developed “that aim to help face this reality” that are already ready for downloading on the Internet.

They are “The Journey”, which seeks to help people suffering from stress and anxiety by completing small levels and unlocking new paths, and “Samay”, which offers to burst plastic bubbles and calm anxiety while listening to relaxing background music.

The others are “Sunflower”, which offers to help a cat reach a state of tranquility; “Anxiety Control”, which teaches to avoid colliding with an unwanted emotion; and “Moot”, which offers to dodge a rain of mouths and eyes that represent people who judge and do not validate the feelings of people with depression.

“The responsible use of video games brings great benefits to people’s physical and mental health. In fact, at the beginning of the pandemic, the WHO promoted their use as a tool to reduce anxiety due to confinement,” said Renzo Guido, professor of the Video Game Design and Digital Entertainment course at the Renzo Guido Institute.

For his part, the director of the Animation and Audiovisual Post-production program of Fundación Universitaria del Área Andina de Colombia, Andrés Martínez, emphasized that the development of video games allows taking, from the analog to the digital, all the elements that can generate relaxation in anxiety and depression.

“This tool has become an opportunity for education, for health, for marketing, and even for sports,” he said.

The video games are hosted online on Toulouse’s website. The public can download them for free and make donations throughout December, as it seeks to raise funds for more children and adolescents to access quality education.

Toulouse Lautrec reported that this was the third edition of the “Game Jam”, which developed video games in partnership with Casa Magia and SOS Children’s Villages on previous occasions, intending to raise awareness about child abuse and violence against women.

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