Adaptive Game Mechanics for Learning Purposes - Making Serious Games Playable and Fun

This paper investigates adaptive games mechanics and how to implement them. First, a comprehensive review of existing adaptive models is presented. Next, we propose a new adaptive model, which combines dynamic difficulty adaptation, the player’s performance, and adaptive flow. An implementation of these new adaptive mechanics is presented in the form of a simple serious game called Number to Number Combat. This game was released freely on the internet in order to be tested by the gaming community. It has shown very promising results that will help us to improve our adaptive model.