A Therapeutic Game to Manage Anxiety Symptoms and Build Resilience

To play the game, simply swipe the spaceship to collect stars. By reacting quickly and swiping the ship earlier, you will go faster, travel farther, and earn more stars. At the beginning of each turn, two faces appear – a happy face and an angry face. The spaceship will always show up underneath the happy face.

People with excessive anxiety pay too much attention to negative thoughts, experiences, and social interactions that can distort their outlook. StarStarter retrains these patterns of attention subconsciously through gamified interactions with facial expressions. Even before babies can crawl, they can recognize the difference between a smiling face and an angry one. Facial expressions are unique in their ability to capture our attention and drive an emotional response. Through the repetition of interactions that focus attention on a pleasant face, our technique re-trains the associated neural pathways to reduce anxiety symptoms. To review our research see https://arcadetherapeutics.com/research/

You should play StarStarter 6 or more minutes a day, four days a week, for at least a month to see results. After completing a 6-minute session for a day, you can choose to play again that same day up to three more times if you’d like. You will be able to continue playing StarStarter for up to 90 days from your first gameplay session.

Each gameplay session is meant to be completed in one sitting, but StarStarter allows you to pause for up to an hour before you will have to restart your session. We recommend that you block out a consistent time in your day to focus on playing the game. It could be after breakfast, during a coffee break, on your commute, or after you finish your work and decompress. Set a recurring reminder on your calendar so you don’t forget!

Not to worry! Much like in life, we all have off days. Just pick up where you left off and try your best to complete all four sessions in the next week.

StarStarter’s point system is designed to help keep you engaged and motivated while playing. Additionally, earning points gradually levels up your spaceship’s magnet power, allowing you to grab stars from even greater distances and earn more points.You can even unlock new powerups and special items that add new layers of fun and complexity. Try to shoot for a high score each session!

You can pause the game by tapping the game console button at the bottom of the screen. From here, you can toggle Audio and Haptic Feedback on and off by tapping their respective icons. Please note that you must have the volume and sound of your device turned on to be able to hear StarStarter’s music and sound.

Visit https://arcadetherapeutics.com/support/ to submit a message.

If you receive StarStarter through your employer or organization, we only share de-identified, aggregated data on usage and mood at the population level. If you receive StarStarter through your provider, you may opt in to provide your usage data to your provider.

StartStarter supports the current iPhone iOS version and previous 3 major release versions. StarStarter supports the current Android version and previous 7 major release versions on devices with 2GB of RAM and a 64-bit processor. iOS users can refer to https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/supported-models-iphe3fa5df43/ios and select your device’s iOS version to find out if their device is supported.