We were inspired to create Risk Factor after seeing how dangerous medical symptoms can sometimes be overlooked or dismissed. One personal inspiration came from a family experience involving heart disease, where concerning symptoms were initially underestimated before becoming much more serious. That experience showed us how difficult and important medical decisions can be.
We also wanted to raise awareness about postpartum complications and the challenges pregnant women face when warning signs are mistaken for normal pregnancy or recovery symptoms. Many dangerous symptoms can appear subtle at first, which makes early recognition extremely important.
Our goal was to create a game that is both educational and engaging — helping players learn warning signs through gameplay instead of simply reading informational material.
Risk Factor is a postpartum triage simulation game where players decide whether patients should be:
- Sent to the Hospital
- Safely sent Home
Each patient arrives with randomized:
- Symptoms
- Dialogue
- Risk factors
- Unrelated distractions
Players must determine which patients may be experiencing dangerous postpartum complications.
The game gradually increases in difficulty over multiple in-game days. New symptom categories and risk factors are introduced over time so players can learn warning signs progressively instead of being overwhelmed all at once.
The game teaches players to identify:
- High Priority Symptoms
- Medium Priority Symptoms
- Medical Risk Factors
- Unrelated Symptoms meant to distract the player
Each day:
-
10 patients arrive
-
Players review their symptoms and dialogue
-
Players choose:
- Send to Hospital
- Send Home
At the beginning of each day, newly introduced symptoms and categories are explained to the player.
- Correct decision: +1 point
- Sending a healthy patient to the hospital: -2 points
- Sending a critical patient home: Immediate Loss
- Reach 7 points or higher by the end of the day
Players lose if:
- They send home a patient in critical condition
- Their score falls below the passing threshold
If too many unnecessary hospital visits occur, the game displays: “Hospital Overcrowded”
Introduces:
- Concept of High Priority symptoms
- 2 High Priority symptoms
Introduces:
- Medium Priority symptoms
- 2 more High Priority symptoms
- 3 Medium Priority symptoms
Introduces:
- Risk Factors
- Remaining High Priority symptoms
- 3 more Medium Priority symptoms
- 2 Risk Factors
Introduces:
- 3 more Medium Priority symptoms
- 3 more Risk Factors
Introduces:
- Remaining symptoms and factors
- Full difficulty gameplay
- Timer to ensure decisions are made quickly
These symptoms generally require immediate medical attention.
Examples:
- Trouble breathing
- Chest pain
- Heart rate above 100 BPM
- Extreme swelling
- Dizziness or fainting
- High blood pressure
- “This morning, I got out of bed, and I felt like I could barely breathe!”
- “My chest feels really tight right now.”
- “I measured my heart rate, and it was 140 bpm.”
- “I fainted earlier today.”
These symptoms may indicate developing complications and should be monitored carefully.
Examples:
- Extreme tiredness
- Persistent coughing
- Rapid weight gain
- Headaches
- Nausea
- Blurred vision
- Trouble sleeping
- Weakness
- Neck, or back pain
- Cold sweats
- “I feel super tired, I can barely keep my eyes open.”
- “Koff-koff! I’ve been coughing for the past few weeks!”
- “My vision sometimes gets really blurry for a few seconds.”
These factors increase the likelihood of postpartum complications.
Examples:
- Family history of heart disease or hypertension
- Over 40 years old
- Limited access to prenatal care
- Smoking, alcohol, or drug use
- Premature birth
- Multiple births
- Limited access to healthy food
- “I have a family history of hypertension.”
- “I smoke every so often.”
- “I haven’t attended a prenatal appointment yet.”
These are healthy or neutral indicators meant to balance gameplay.
Examples:
- Regular exercise
- Healthy eating
- No smoking or drug use
- Attending prenatal appointments
- Young age
- “I usually hit the gym every day.”
- “I regularly attend my prenatal appointments.”
- “I don’t smoke or drink.”
These symptoms are included to distract players and simulate realistic patient conversations.
Examples:
- Sneezing
- Acne
- Rash
- Tooth pain
- Mild bruises
- Mood swings
- Constipation
- “My allergies are acting up.”
- “I have a tooth ache.”
- “I got a paper cut.”
Patients should be sent to the hospital if they have:
Example:
- Chest pain
- Trouble breathing
Example:
- Family history of hypertension
- Persistent headaches
Example:
- Trouble sleeping
- Nausea
- Weakness
The game uses weighted random generation to create realistic patients.
Randomly Chosen Symptoms:
- Non-Risk Factors
- Unrelated Symptoms
The game randomly selects one of three dangerous patient types:
Includes:
- 1 guaranteed High Priority symptom
Additional symptoms may include:
- More High Priority symptoms
- Medium symptoms
- Risk factors
- Unrelated symptoms
Includes:
- 1 Risk Factor
- 1 Medium Priority symptom
Additional symptoms may include:
- More Medium symptoms
- More Risk factors
- Unrelated symptoms
Includes:
- 3 guaranteed Medium Priority symptoms
Additional symptoms:
- Mostly unrelated or non-risk symptoms
- ASP.NET API
- C#
- HTML
- CSS
- JavaScript
- Figma
We organized symptoms into several categories:
- High Priority
- Medium Priority
- Risk Factors
- Non-Risk Factors
- Unrelated Symptoms
Patients are procedurally generated using weighted probabilities. Healthy patients mostly receive harmless symptoms, while dangerous patients receive combinations that require careful decision-making.
We also:
- Added multiple dialogue variations for realism
- Created a progressive learning system
- Connected a C# backend API to the frontend
- Built randomized gameplay systems
Some major challenges included:
- Researching medically accurate postpartum symptoms
- Properly balancing educational gameplay
- Categorizing symptoms appropriately
- Integrating frontend systems with backend APIs
- Connecting randomized patient generation with UI logic
We used resources from the California Department of Public Health’s Maternal, Child, and Adolescent Health resources to improve accuracy.
We are proud of:
- Combining education with gameplay
- Building a procedural dialogue system
- Designing progressive difficulty
- Creating replayable randomized scenarios
- Raising awareness about postpartum complications
During development, we learned:
- How to integrate ASP.NET APIs with frontend systems
- How to use C# for procedural gameplay generation
- How to structure scalable randomized systems
- How to balance educational content with fun gameplay
We plan to add:
- More symptom dialogue variations
- Dynamic patient reactions
- Difficulty modes
- Audio and voice acting
- Additional postpartum complications
- Feature to customize amount of new features to learn per level
- More advanced AI-driven patient behavior
We also want to continue improving the educational side of the game while keeping it engaging and approachable.
- Install .NET 9
- Clone GitHub Repository
- cd RiskFactor\RiskFactorBackend
- dotnet run
- Open http://localhost:5296/ on browser
- Troubleshooting: Check to ensure port matches terminal output of dotnet run command.