Table 2.

Summary of trends and future lines of serious games.

Analyzed processes in this serious games review
Implementation
	Trends
		The majority of games treat both depression and anxiety, with prevention and therapy being the most common applications.
		Exclusive games for depression are targeted to adolescence and anxiety games to childhood.
		Prevention and therapy games have the widest range of learning: emotional and social skills, meditation, cognitive behavioral therapy, and anxiety symptom reduction.
	Future lines
		More awareness and detection games are needed, and the 4 applications should be mixed to increase the effect.
		Anxiety and depression should be equally addressed in all age ranges.
		There are still no games that test depressive symptoms.
Development
	Trends
		The most common game genres are arcade minigames, adventure worlds, and social simulations, in this order.
		Arcade minigames and adventure worlds can serve most types of learning, while social simulations are more valuable to teach social skills and stigma reduction.
		Therapy games usually use smartphones and prevention games use PC, regardless of the target age.
		Most games are played within 1 hour, but prevention and therapy games can be longer.
	Future lines
		There should be more games for VR to take advantage of the learning capabilities this device offers.
		Game design should be standardized to better develop these games.
		These serious games should be available to the general public to assess design and development.
Evaluation
	Trends
		Therapy games are the only ones not used as a stand-alone tool.
		Prevention, detection, and awareness games are tested with the largest groups, and therapy games with the smallest.
		Most studies measure skills improvement or symptom reduction in participants, commonly using normalized questionnaires.
		Most studies collect and compare participant data before and after playing, which should be the standard.
	Future lines
		Serious games should not be the only tool for the learning and should always offer support and perform a debriefing.
		Studies should use standardized questionnaires so the results could be compared between studies.
		Games should be developed so playing data could be collected and analyzed to understand participant behavior and learning.