NutritionBuddy: a Childhood Obesity Serious Game

Childhood obesity is a public health challenge which is associated with eating disorders and causes crucial long-term health effects. Therefore, there is a necessity for an innovative approach for preventing and treating childhood obesity. Serious games for health are designed to entertain players while attempting to convey serious content, promote and facilitate learning, and try to modify some aspects of the players' health behavior. The present paper describes the state of the art in childhood obesity related serious games and discusses their approaches. On top of that review, we introduce the design approach of our developed serious game “NutritionBuddy”, which is based on social cognitive theory principles. Our game aims to promote a healthy balanced nutrition to be followed by children to support the prevention and treatment of childhood obesity.