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Title

Exploring Visual Aesthetics and Performance in Indoor Cycling Exergames

Summary

Presenting T-Wrecks, an innovative exergame designed to enhance physical activity through gamified indoor cycling. Players control a dinosaur avatar across three virtual lanes by adjusting cycling speed: slow, medium, or fast. The game incorporates a dynamic difficulty adaptation system, determined by a 20-second maximal effort sprint during the games onboarding tutorial. This system personalizes the lane speeds based on the player’s fitness capacity, aiming to deliver a personalized physical difficulty level. A study with 12 healthy adults evaluated T-Wrecks’ effectiveness. Participants initially performed an incremental step test to exhaustion, to establish heart rate intensity zones on a Lode bike in a sports laboratory. Following this, participants played the game T-Wrecks, which consisted of the first play through onboarding sequence and then one level of standard gameplay. During gameplay, heart rate and rate of perceived exertion data were collected. Results revealed that most participants experienced moderate to vigorous exercise intensity during gameplay. Notably, T-Wrecks elicited higher motivation and lower perceived exertion compared to the step test. Participants reported that the game ""hid the effort required"" through its engaging mechanics, which enhanced enjoyment and reduced focus on physical strain. Despite participants having very different physical fitness abilities, the adaptive difficulty calibration effectively set a level of challenge across the participant group that was relative to their own personal fitness capability. The study demonstrates T-Wrecks’ potential to promote physical activity through engaging gameplay and personalized challenges.

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