Mythos
A play therapy video game for adopted children and children with trauma, the first of its kind designed to be played alongside a licensed therapist.
Play therapy works.
The tools don't.
"How might we use play to help adopted children and children with trauma work through past traumas, so they can form healthy attachments with their families?"
Thousands of children enter foster or adoptive care every year carrying complex developmental trauma. Play therapy is one of the most effective clinical tools for this population — it allows children who can't verbalize their experiences to process them through play. But the tools available to therapists hadn't kept pace.
Therapeutic video games existed, but they were designed for different populations and different treatment models. None were built to be played together with a therapist. For children whose nervous systems have learned that safety itself is dangerous, the therapist's presence isn't a feature. It's the treatment. That absence was the gap this research addressed.
Research said: go into
the playroom.
The research began with a deep ethnographic study of 46 families and in-depth concept testing with three licensed therapists: two play therapists and one social worker specializing in adopted children. Rather than designing a game and testing usability, the team went inside the clinical environment first to understand what was actually broken.
What the research revealed changed the direction entirely. Therapists weren't looking for a game that taught skills. They needed a tool that created conditions for the therapeutic relationship to do its work. The bear character, the open-ended world, the absence of timers and fail states: none of these were aesthetic choices. They came directly from what therapists said they needed their clients to feel. One therapist put it plainly: being a bear is removed enough from their experience that it's not threatening, but close enough that their brain can still make those connections.
A therapy session became
a video game.
Mythos is a role-play action-adventure game where children guide a customizable stuffed bear through a world that mirrors the trauma journey — with no timers, no wrong answers, and no fail states. Children progress on their own terms, with their therapist present throughout.
The game is set in a cold, desolate fantasy world. Children play as a customizable stuffed bear — choosing its name, color, age, and a character-based superpower — and guide it through a narrative built on the 12-step hero quest framework. Five trauma-informed mechanics are woven into the gameplay: feeling zones that teach interoceptive awareness, brain breaks and body breaks for stress regulation, NPC interactions that practice social trust, and health maintenance challenges that address the body-awareness deficits common in this population.
Everything a play therapist would work on in a session is embedded in the game — not as instruction, but as play. The bear character was not an aesthetic choice. It came directly from what therapists said they needed their clients to feel: removed enough from their experience that it's not threatening, but close enough that their brain can still make those connections.
Mythos gameplay: after their bear finds themselves whisked away into a new, cold land, children are prompted to identify how their bear feels.
The bear told us
everything.
Six children tested the prototype. Three typically developing. Three adopted with developmental delays — drawn from the original thesis families, returning years later to play the game their data helped design.
The adopted children selected intense emotions — Sad, Angry, Angry — and mapped those feelings across their entire bodies. The typically developing children selected Happy and barely touched the body map.
These are not data points. They are moments the game created for the therapist.
Designing for accessibility addresses the interface. It does not address what trauma did to the child's brain. The assistance these children needed from the facilitator is exactly what they will need from their therapist. That's not a design failure. That's the co-play model working.
While this study tested adopted children, the findings are about complex trauma, not adoption. The pandemic recreated institutional care conditions for an entire generation. The need is no longer about one population. It is generational.
The research is done.
The children are waiting.
Mythos has a validated research foundation, a tested prototype, and evidence that its therapeutic core works for the children it was designed to serve.
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Clinical
Clinical Partners
Licensed therapists who work with children with complex trauma to co-design the companion guide and run clinical pilot sessions. Institutional affiliation provides IRB access for research publication.
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Development
Development Partners
Game studio to build the production version in Unreal Engine with full visual fidelity, accessibility compliance, and multi-platform support.
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Funding
Funding Partners
Grant support to fund the clinical pilot and production build. Four years of validated research, a working prototype, and usability data across two populations.
Mythos gameplay: after their bear finds themselves whisked away into a new, cold land, children are prompted to identify how their bear feels.
"How does Rada feel?" The game asks about the bear. The child answers about themselves. The therapist makes it meaningful.
Without the therapist, there is no game.
If you work in play therapy, game development, or therapeutic technology funding, I'd like to hear from you.
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