Elephant's Garden

A VR game playable from a hospital bed — with one button

Most VR assumes players can stand, move freely, and wield controllers. None of that holds for a child receiving treatment in a hospital bed. Elephant's Garden embraced those constraints: players became a young elephant tending an increasingly elaborate garden with its trunk — looking down to gather water, raising the head and pressing a single button to spray it, tilting to control the arc. From one button and head tracking emerged a surprisingly rich interaction vocabulary. Levels added challenge through timing and observation, never through control complexity, and regular playtesting with children shaped every iteration. The project proved that accessibility isn't a compromise — it can be the engine of design innovation.