A Brief Review of Game Engines for Educational and Serious Games Development

Gamification is the use of game design elements to enhance the teaching-learning process and turn a regular, non-game activity into a fun, engaging game. Simultaneously, serious games are proposed as an efficient and enjoyable way of conducting cognitive assessment, as they combine a serious intention with game rules and targets. In this scenario, game engines have emerged as information technologies for serious games and educational games development; however, this development has usually been performed without a guide to identifying game attributes to be present in the game. To address this gap, we present an analysis of the most used game engines to identify game and learning attributes supported for serious and educational games development. Findings from this analysis provide a guide of the most popular game engines that offer the largest support for game attributes, which were also classified by game categories.