## 3 Observations and Analysis
### Characteristics of Selected Studies  
The selected articles were written in English and were published between the years 2008 and 2022 (as no related publication was found in 2023 in the search results). The publications with the highest number of articles were 'Games for Health Journal' (4) followed by the 'Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry' (2). In terms of publication years, 2019 and 2022 saw the highest number of articles published at 9 and the second highest number of articles published was in 2018 at 7. In total, 34 out of 37 articles were journal papers and only 3 were conference papers. Country-wise, the USA produced the highest number of articles (9 out of 37) closely followed by the Netherlands (7 out of 37). In a continental comparison, Europe led the publications list with 16 articles that were published between 2016 and 2022, followed by North America with 9 articles that were published between 2010 and 2022. Tables 2-4 show a more complete picture of the serious games utilized, the population details of the participants and the intervention details of the selected studies. The population in the selected articles mostly consisted of neurotypical individuals, being present in nearly 78% of the articles, while autistic individuals were present in nearly 19% of the articles and 3% of the articles were about both populations. The mean age of the participants was between 8 and 78.5. The mean age of the neurotypical participants was 35.5 and for the ASD participants it was 13.9. For 7 out of 37 studies, the mean age of the participants was above 45, meaning most of the studies were focused on the younger population of ASD and neurotypical individuals. The most commonly utilized experimental methodology was 'pilot study' at eight articles, closely followed by 'randomized controlled study' at seven articles. Out of the 37 selected articles, 8 used games on portable platforms (iPad OS, iOS, Android, etc.) [37; 39; 41; 43; 46; 51; 52; 54; 56; 58; 60; 63; 67; 98], 6 PC games (Windows) [47; 48; 49; 52; 53; 57], 2 used console games (Nintendo DS XL and Nintendo's Wii Sports) [40; 61], 2 were web-based [42; 59] and 5 utilized custom platforms [33; 38; 65; 66; 68]. In most cases, the control group was given standard therapy (7 out of 37), closely followed by being given a different game than the intervention (5 out of 37). Several studies provided different alternative support or therapies to the control groups; for instance, 9 studies provided standard therapy for the respective affective disorder to the control groups [35; 38; 39; 40; 42; 44; 51; 55] and 10 were given either a different, the same game with some changes or the same game at phase 2 trials [34; 36; 41; 52; 53; 54; 58; 60; 62; 64; 98]. This, along with the heterogeneity of the population in the studies, meant that it was not possible to carry out a further meta-analysis of the studies' findings. The most prevalent affective disorder in the selected literature was anxiety. Anxiety was the sole focus of 11 articles, was accompanied by other disorders in 4 other articles and in 2 other articles was included as social or dental anxiety. Major depressive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder had the second highest prevalence at 2 articles each. However, depression was included in 11 articles combined with other disorders, indicating a higher comorbidity of depression with other affective disorders. When it comes to game genres, there are several schools of thought on how games should be classified based on characteristics including storyline and dynamics [94; 99]. Some of the games encountered in this review did not fit the traditional genres; for instance, the most frequently occurring game genre in the articles were VR games that were purposeful for relaxation and distraction by just moving around virtual worlds or just conversing with VR agents. Hence, we coined the genre terms \"therapeutic VR\" and \"social VR\" respectively for these games.