Games for Health Europe 2018 and the Underground laparoscopic game

Games for Health Europe 2018 took place on October 8 and 9, 2018, at TAC (Temporary Art Centre) in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Its first day included a session titled Saving Robots Improves Laparoscopic Performance: Transfer Of Skills From A Serious Game To A Virtual Reality Simulator, presented by Wouter IJgosse. He was a PhD candidate at the Department of Surgery of Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, with a research focus on the potential of serious games for surgical education.

The starting problem is time. Surgical residents have access to box trainers and virtual reality simulators, but after a heavy workload few have the energy for repetitive drills. Turning the drills into a game lets doctors practice at home.

IJgosse tested construct validity for Underground with two groups. The control group trained on the FLS Video Trainer and the LapSim VR Simulator for four sessions. The Underground group played the game for three sessions, followed by a transfer session on the FLS trainer and the LapSim.

The Underground group did better than the control group on all three LapSim motor skills: camera navigation, instrument navigation and coordination. That result points to a transfer of skills from a game to a validated simulator.

Underground itself is a puzzle game for the Nintendo Wii U, built by Grendel Games with controllers that imitate laparoscopic instruments. Its story follows a girl named Sari and a robot named Sw4nk through four worlds. Grendel Games, a studio for entertainment and serious games, was founded in 2003 and is based in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands. Its clients' problems have included obesity in children, peaks in water consumption and motivating children to do rehabilitation exercises, and for Underground the studio developed affordable controllers and had them produced itself.

Games for Health Europe continues. Its website in November 2026 advertises the 2027 edition on March 22 and 23 at Natlab in Eindhoven and labels it the 12th conference.

Grendel Games is online at grendelgames.com, listing an address in Leeuwarden and over twenty years of experience in serious game design. Its pages describe a laparoscopic surgery training system called Laptitude, linked to the sister brand Grendel Medical, with apps named Laptitude: Curious Cases, Laptitude: Skill Drills and Laptitude: Procedures. Underground is not named on the pages found, so no current page for the game is known.