PlayWell Help & Guide

1. Open PlayWell using the button at the top of this page.
2. Describe the patient in the left-hand panel: age, available consoles, conditions, topics to avoid. You can also start from an example scenario.
3. Read the results: Good fit, Use with caution and Excluded, each with the reasons why.
4. Open a game for its full content and accessibility profile, then preview it with a playthrough video.

Try an example

Each opens PlayWell with that scenario already filled in:

The panel starts with every section folded. Each one shows a one-line summary of what's set, and settings still at their defaults appear in grey. Click a heading to open it, or use Expand all. Reset clears everything.

Section	What it does
Age & ratings	Age (5–25) sets the maximum ESRB, PEGI and USK rating automatically, and you can override each one. Which rating system governs decides whether a game must pass all three (strictest) or just one region's system.
Available platforms	Only show games for the consoles or devices you have. Leave it empty for any platform.
Xbox Game Pass	Only show games included in a Game Pass tier (Essential, Premium or Ultimate), on console or PC. See section 6.
Conditions & needs	Medical, sensory, motor, emotional and life-circumstance needs. Each one changes which games pass. For example, TBI penalizes flashing and fast camera motion, Deaf excludes games that need hearing, and One hand available favors one-handed play.
Sensitive topics to avoid	Story themes to steer clear of (divorce, death of a parent, hospitals, horror…). Some conditions pre-select related topics, e.g. Recent bereavement selects death and grief themes. Adjust them for the patient. See section 4.
Symptom focus	The six categories from the Child's Play Therapeutic Video Game Guide (Pain, Boredom short/long stay, Anxiety, Sadness, Cognitive impairment). They favor games with the matching qualities.
Therapeutic goals	Relaxation, distraction, socializing, family play, creativity, mastery, cognitive or physical exercise, mood.
Play setting & online safety	Playing alone or together, and whether online play, chat with strangers, and in-game purchases or loot boxes are acceptable. All three are off by default.

The three tabs

Good fit	Passes the rating, content and condition checks with no significant concerns. Sorted by fit score.
Use with caution	Allowed, but the concerns add up. Review them with the patient or family first.
Excluded	Filtered out by a hard rule. It's still listed, so you can see why a familiar game is missing.

Reasons on each card

✔ works in the game's favor   ⚠ a caution   ✖ why it was excluded   ℹ for information

The text in brackets after each reason shows which part of the profile triggered it, e.g. (Traumatic brain injury). The fit score (0–100) starts at 50, adds points for each ✔ and subtracts for each ⚠.

Colors

Card backgrounds and rating badges are colored by age level:

The color follows the governing rating system. Under Strictest, it uses whichever rating is most restrictive. The colored stripe on a card's left edge shows its verdict.

Badges

• ESRB / PEGI / USK ↗: hover for a one-line summary of the rating, or click to open the rating board's official guide to what each rating means: ESRB Ratings Guide, PEGI: what do the labels mean, The USK age ratings. To look up a specific game's rating, use the Look up this game links on its full profile.
• ✓: the ratings come from the official Microsoft Store listing, not entered by hand.
• Game Pass Essential / Premium / Ultimate: the lowest Game Pass tier that includes the game.
• Child's Play: the game is listed in the Child's Play Therapeutic Video Game Guide.

Age ratings cover violence, language and sexual content. They don't tell you that It Takes Two is about a divorce, that Stardew Valley opens at a grandfather's deathbed, or that My Brother Rabbit is about a seriously ill child. PlayWell tags 37 themes in each game's story, and records how prominent each one is:

Central	The theme drives the story or the whole game.
Present	A clear part of the game, such as a storyline or a memorable scene.
Brief	A mention or a short moment.

Strictness setting

• Strict: excludes a game for any mention of an avoided topic.
• Standard (default): excludes central or present themes, and marks brief ones as a caution.
• Lenient: only excludes games where the topic is central.

Each game's full profile shows the theme table with a note on where each theme appears. A theme that troubles one patient may validate another, so use the notes to decide.

Click a game's title or Full content & accessibility profile → to open it. It shows:

• For this patient: the verdict and every reason, based on your current profile.
• Official ratings: ESRB, PEGI and USK with their content descriptors (with links explaining what the descriptors mean), plus Look up this game links to its entry on each rating board's site.
• Sensitive content: each theme with its prominence and a note.
• Gameplay demands (none to high): fine-motor precision, reaction speed, cognitive load, reading, reliance on hearing, visual busyness, flashing, motion-sickness risk, emotional intensity, failure penalty, time pressure.
• Accessibility: pausing, subtitles, visual sound cues, colorblind support, text size, narration, blind-playable, remapping, one-handed play, touch controls, assist modes, playable in bed.
• Social & purchases: co-op, online requirements, chat with strangers, user-made content, purchases and loot boxes.
• Therapeutic strengths, Game Pass availability, and any Child's Play guide listings.
• Watch before you play: see section 7.

Library tab

• PlayWell library: every game with a full content profile. Search it, or filter by a theme ("Contains: Death of a parent") to see every game that touches on it.
• Xbox Game Pass catalog: every game currently on Game Pass (about 900), with its tier on console and PC and its official ratings. By default it only shows games within the patient's rating limits. Games marked Full profile have been content-reviewed. Ratings only means only the official rating is known.

Game Pass tiers

Choosing a tier also includes the tiers below it: Essential is the smallest library, Premium adds the back catalog, and Ultimate includes everything, including day-one releases and EA Play.

Keeping it current

Click Update now (Game Pass section, or the Library catalog) to pull the latest catalog from Microsoft. It takes 10–20 seconds the first time, then it's cached for 30 minutes. The line under the button shows when it was last updated, and revert returns to the built-in copy.

• ▶ Search for playthrough (on every card and library row) opens a YouTube search for kid- and family-friendly playthroughs in a new tab.
• A game's full profile adds No-commentary playthrough, usually the safest preview because there's no streamer language, and Official trailer.
• Videos that staff have reviewed appear embedded on the game page, tagged Kid-friendly ✓, with who reviewed them and notes such as "sad scene at 1:12:00".

• Share or bookmark: the patient profile lives in the page address. Copy the URL from your browser to save or share a search, and it reopens exactly as you left it.
• Print / PDF (top right of the results) prints the current list of games without the side panel. Choose "Save as PDF" in the print dialog to save a file.
• Privacy: PlayWell has no accounts and no patient records. Profiles hold needs only, and nothing about the patient is sent to a server. The only server request is the optional Game Pass update, which sends just the country.

Sources

• Age ratings: ESRB, PEGI and USK. For Game Pass titles, official ratings come from the Microsoft Store.
• Symptom categories: the Child's Play Therapeutic Video Game Guide (Child's Play, Circana and UC San Diego researchers). It's one signal among several.
• Themes, demands and accessibility: compiled by PlayWell for each game.

Limitations

• Content profiles are still being verified. Check anything important against the rating boards and a playthrough.
• PlayWell is decision support. It doesn't replace clinical judgment or knowing the patient.

FAQ

Why is a game I expected missing? Look in the Excluded tab. Every excluded game lists the reason.

Why are there so few results? Each condition, topic and safety setting narrows the list. Try Lenient strictness, allow more platforms, or turn off the Game Pass filter.

Why can't I set an age under 5? PlayWell supports ages 5–25.

"Update now" shows an error. Microsoft's catalog service may be busy. The built-in catalog keeps working, so try again later.