The Finnish ADHD awareness game FULL ADHD wins the award for the Most Valuable Patient Education work in the Reuters Pharma Awards Europe 2022. The game found its way to the top out of roughly 800 nominees. This is the 4th award the game has won from multiple different industries. The game was co-created by the Finnish game company Psyon Games and Takeda Finland and the development involved an expert psychiatrist as well as the Finnish ADHD patient association.
FULL ADHD is an interactive mobile game based on a scientific framework and real-life experiences on how ADHD can affect everyday life. The game was designed to raise awareness of adult ADHD, its symptoms as well as the impact that ADHD can have on people’s lives.
The player jumps in the shoes of young Eetu Vaarakallio and his busy ADHD life. When the player is making the choices that guide Eetu’s life, their options are limited by the executive function resource. This resource depicts Eetu’s ability to organize, focus, go through effort, remember and regulate his emotions and actions. With an ADHD person like Eetu, this resource may suddenly run out and the story may take an unexpected turn.
The game describes the ADHD experience with the help of an identifiable story and choice mechanics that are based on Brown’s theoretical model of executive functions impaired in ADHD. As a visual novel, the game is easy to understand and play for everyone. In addition to the main gameplay, the game features a wide in-game info library with info articles about the topics the game deals with.
FULL ADHD was launched in March 2021 on Apple App Store and Google Play Store as part of a broader communications campaign called “What does ADHD feel like?”. During the campaign the game received an overall rating of 4.1 / 5.0 on App Store and Play Store and it has received a lot of positive feedback from the players.
To date FULL ADHD has been awarded four times: as the Medical Information Act of the year by the Finnish Pharmaceutical Industry in October 2021 and as the Applied Game of the Year by the Finnish Game Industry in May 2022. In addition, the launch campaign of the game “How does ADHD feel like?” won the 2022 EMEA SABRE Award in the Consumer Health category. On November 17, 2022 the game won the award for the Most Valuable Patient Education work in the Reuters Pharma Awards Europe 2022.
Psyon Games and Takeda will soon publish a white paper about the successful ADHD awareness work in Finland. Psyon Games is currently fundraising for global expansion.
“We are very proud of this game and this award. This is an example of Finnish innovation that has proven to be ready for international scaling. We’ve also demonstrated that Takeda can be a partner in growth for a Finnish startup and serve as a launching pad for them to reach international markets”, says the business unit director Laura Aulanko from Takeda.
“It has been a wonderful experience for a small startup like us to engage in co-development with a global innovative pharmaceutical company and to create a game that combines science and arts to spread awareness about ADHD in an exceptionally successful way. Our co-creation with Takeda is and will remain as one our most memorable productions ever”, says the Psyon Games CEO Olli Rundgren.
In the FULL ADHD game, the main character Eetu must make everyday life choices to progress in the story. Choices that require Eetu to regulate his behavior come with a cost that must be paid with the executive function resource (upper left). The player must try to anticipate the consequences of their choices and use the resources carefully. If Eetu runs out of resources, the story may take an unexpected turn.
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