Table 4.

Throughout the game-based digital mental health intervention development phases, the emphasis shifts among the 4 themes: target audience, engagement, mechanisms of action, and effectiveness. The level of focus on the themes are represented as higher focus (HF) and lower focus (LF).

Theme	Concept design	Development	Evaluation	Production
Target audience: who is the intervention engaging and effective for?	HF	HF	LF	LF
Engagement: do users interact with the intervention?	LF	HF	HF	HF
Mechanisms of action: what explains the intervention effects?	HF	LF	LF	LF
Effectiveness: what does the intervention achieve?	LF	LF	HF	LF