  Phobia is a widespread mental illness, and severe phobias can seriously
impact patients daily lives. One-session Exposure Treatment (OST) has been used
to treat phobias in the early days,but it has many disadvantages. As a new way
to treat a phobia, virtual reality exposure therapy(VRET) based on serious
games is introduced. There have been much researches in the field of serious
games for phobia therapy (SGPT), so this paper presents a detailed review of
SGPT from three perspectives. First, SGPT in different stages has different
forms with the update and iteration of technology. Therefore, we reviewed the
development history of SGPT from the perspective of equipment. Secondly, there
is no unified classification framework for a large number of SGPT. So we
classified and combed SGPT according to different types of phobias. Finally,
most articles on SGPT have studied the therapeutic effects of serious games
from a medical perspective, and few have studied serious games from a technical
perspective. Therefore, we conducted in-depth research on SGPT from a technical
perspective in order to provide technical guidance for the development of SGPT.
Accordingly, the challenges facing the existing technology has been explored
and listed.
