Serious games for health

•Revision of 108 serious games for health from 2004 to 2012.•Four new classification criteria of serious games for health.•Comparison of surveyed games with graphical summary of results and discussion.

Maintaining and restoring health is a basic aspect of well being. On the other hand, serious games is an emerging technology growing in importance for specialized training, taking advantage of 3D games and game engines in order to improve the realistic experience of users. Thus, according to the advancement of technology and the desire to achieve good health using an interesting and enjoyable way, different serious games for health have been proposed during the last few years. In this paper, we present the core process of serious games and explain their functionalities. Then, we survey more than one hundred serious games for health and propose new classifications in four different aspects. Finally, we use fifteen relevant characteristics to classify all the surveyed games and present them with plenty of graphs and charts with corresponding discussion.