IGER: a game engine specifically tailored to rehabilitation

Exergames for rehabilitation, both in the physical and cognitive fields, have been the target of much research in the last years. Such exergames, however, are often created for a specific impairment and cannot be generalized to other domains. More generally speaking, the lack of shared design and development guidelines for rehabilitation games can be highlighted. The Intelligent Game Engine for Rehabilitation (IGER) described here has been developed with the intent to provide a framework for building rehabilitation exergames that are functional, accessible and entertaining. Several features, mandatory for rehabilitation, have been incorporated: configuration, adaptation, monitoring, data logging and feedback through a virtual therapist. Besides describing how these features have been implemented in IGER, we describe here also a few games we created with it and their rationale.