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Flora Frontier

Flora Frontier

Game design · Computer vision · Health research

A game designed
to help regulate.

Flora Frontier is a garden-themed resource management game with guided breathing sessions and computer vision support for adolescents with autism.

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The origin

Game mechanics became a research question.

At UCI GSET, I studied how reward schedules, difficulty curves, and adaptive systems can shape player behavior. Our Unity prototype and final presentation became the foundation for a more focused project.

Flora Frontier applies those ideas to emotional regulation. Players manage a garden, pause for guided breathing, and receive an experience built around steadiness instead of urgency.

12–16

Target age range

OpenCV

Breathing detection

JMIR

Paper submitted

Field notes

How the work moved.

01

Design

Make calm part of the game loop

The project combines resource management with guided breathing so regulation is not a separate lecture or interruption. It is part of how the experience progresses.

02

Detect

Use the camera with restraint

An OpenCV pipeline detects diaphragmatic breathing from a webcam during guided sessions. The computer vision supports the exercise without turning the screen into a clinical dashboard.

03

Study

Measure more than engagement

The IRB-aligned study tracks heart-rate variability and self-reported anxiety across weekly gameplay, with the resulting paper submitted to JMIR Serious Games.

From prototype to project

The first presentation was a beginning.

The UCI program supplied the mechanics, technical foundation, and confidence to present an early prototype. Flora Frontier grew by asking how those tools could serve a specific group with a specific need.

Play Flora Frontier

A prototype from one summer became a multi-year effort to design, build, and evaluate with care.

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