Grendel Games: the Dutch serious game studio and its healthcare work

Grendel Games was founded by Tim Laning and Jan-Jaap Severs. In interviews around 2011 the two argued that play drives motivation to learn, and that rehabilitation games shift attention from the exercise to the in-game obstacle, so patients keep moving while their focus is elsewhere. The studio built nearly all of its serious games on its own Chameleon engine, which combined graphics, audio, animation and physics and was designed to run on PC, Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

At that time the studio was developing Virtual Endosuite, a training application for the assisting staff of endoscopic and laparoscopic operations, with no surgeon or patient in the scenario. It trained setting up an endosuite, getting equipment running and adjusting instrument settings during a procedure. A scenario editor let instructors design situations, trainee responses were measured, and results could be compared in an online database. The work was done with LIMIS, and validation with medical professionals began together with development.

Severs also said that standardizing the technology behind medical games had cut development costs by a large margin. On validation he pointed to hospital liability and professional skepticism, and said the studio started validating at the same time it started developing, so that medical professionals gave input from the first step.

The web address listed for the studio in 2011, grendel-games.com, now shows only an error page. A site for Grendel Games BV is online at grendelgames.com, with an address in Leeuwarden. It presents the studio as a partner for serious games for training, learning and behavioral change, cites more than twenty years of experience, and lists products such as scenario-based training, games for sustainability and a remix service that reskins existing games.

The studio's healthcare line now runs under the name Grendel Medical, at grendelmedical.com. Its main product is Laptitude, described as an affordable, portable, personal laparoscopic training system with gamified drills and cases. Neither site mentions Virtual Endosuite, so the status of that project could not be confirmed.

Grendel Medical lists pre-made simulation and gaming components for minimally invasive and robotic surgery training, and describes Laptitude as a validated tool that fits in a backpack, with drills and cases that range from core skills to full procedures. The main studio site also describes a design product that lets planners lay out spaces from gardens to town squares as if playing a game, and a family platform game about saving water, electricity or gas.