The ACE of Hearts Serious Game for Young People With Adverse Childhood Experiences: Experience-Based Co-Design and Agile Development Study

Background

Young people exposed to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are at risk of poor mental and physical health across the life course, yet many struggle to access timely help. Serious games offer an engaging, scalable, and stigma-reducing support, but few are co-designed with young people who have lived experience of ACEs, and methodological accounts of how participatory design is operationalized alongside software delivery are scarce.