The Lifesaver application simulates emergency situations in interactive life-action films to educate people on what they should do to save life of someone who is chocking or has a cardiac arrest. The project is backed by the UK’s Resuscitation Council with digital production by Unit9.

The free game-like app, which runs on PC, phones and tablets (both iOS and Andriod), provides users with first aid step-by-step guidelines on how to start cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) for a person dying in the street. The project aims to tackle the bystander problem—annually, one of the 60,000 people in the UK have an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, but fewer than 10% survive, largely because people around don’t have basic lifesaving skills. The team behind the app believes that public training through interactive media, which should be followed by a traditional CPR course, can save more lives.

The application puts the users in the situation, where they are required to be quick and smart, just like in the real life. The simulator limits the time for taking the on-the-spot decisions, offering several options—the actions get activated by either clicking or dragging a mouse on the PC screen. The app gives stars for the right decisions and explains why the wrong ones are bad. The tablet version makes experience even more intuitive and natural, since the users perform the actions by shacking and moving the device up and down.

The situations are very carefully scripted, with all the real-life details, with usual human reactions like fear and shock. The films that run 8- 12 minutes create a feeling of being there, letting users to control the situation through a series of actions.

Careful preproduction planning and scripting was essential to ensure Lifesaver achieved the desired impact.

«One problem many interactive films suffer is suspension of disbelief and users’ failure to identify with the choices the lead character they are meant to identify with has to make,” explains interactive writer and director Martin Percy, who was behind the Lifesaver app. “The key is to ensure the user believes they are controlling a real character in a real situation at all times.”

The app comes as an addition to the pack of lifesaving education tools, not a replacement of traditional resuscitation training. Lifesaver invites users to book a CPR course at one of the related organizations across the UK.