From Play to Progress: A Structured Narrative Review of Design Characteristics and Reported Developmental Outcomes of Digital Games for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

Digital games have increasingly been used to support learning and early intervention for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), yet evidence regarding their impact on children's developmental outcomes remains fragmented. Therefore, this study conducted a structured narrative review to examine the design characteristics and reported developmental outcomes of digital games for children with ASD. A total of 27 studies were identified from Web of Science, IEEE Xplore, PubMed, and Google Scholar based on their relevance to children with ASD, digital games, and reported developmental outcomes. The findings indicate that the reviewed studies reported outcomes across five domains: communication and social behavior, emotional regulation, daily living skills, executive functioning and cognition, and learning skills. Therapeutic digital games were more frequently reported in relation to adaptive domains, particularly communication and emotional regulation, whereas educational digital games more frequently target cognitive and learning-related outcomes. The reported outcome patterns also varied by participant age, intervention duration, technology format, and study type. Overall, digital games demonstrate meaningful potential as supportive tools for children with ASD rather than as stand-alone evidence of universal effectiveness. Future research should adopt more rigorous and standardized designs to enhance comparability and clarify the conditions under which digital games may support specific developmental outcomes.