GamEmotion: A Serious Game for Emotion Regulation in Young Adolescents

Serious games (SGs) have emerged as an appropriate intervention for adolescents due to their significant use of video games. Although literature reviews and meta-analyses increasingly support the effectiveness and acceptability of SGs in addressing mental health problems and promoting healthy lifestyles in young people, there remains a significant gap in SGs specifically designed to improve emotion regulation (ER) skills. In response, we present the serious game GamEmotion, a 3D digital action-adventure game developed in Unity, designed to provide psychoeducation about six basic emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust) and two ER strategies (cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression). We believe that we have developed the first SG to improve emotional awareness and ER in Portuguese adolescents, based on the Gross process model, one of the most widely reported models of ER. We present the GamEmotion framework alongside our ongoing usability study protocol with young adolescents ($10-14$ years) and their parents. By proposing this innovative tool, we aim to broaden the application of SG and address specific challenges in adolescent ER to improve mental health.