Background: Stress has become a widespread phenomenon, and serious games are increasingly recognized as engaging tools for stress relief. However, despite the rapid advancement of Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen-AI), its integration into stress-relief serious games remains insufficiently explored. Objective: This study aimed to address this gap by developing "Reverie", an Gen-AI driven serious game powered by the Unity engine and ChatGPT, and to preliminarily evaluate its effectiveness in stress reduction, user experience, and cognitive emotion regulation. Methods: A 14-day pilot study was conducted with 20 students experiencing moderate to high levels of stress. Participants used "Reverie" as a stress-relief intervention. Stress levels, user experience, and cognitive emotion regulation strategies were assessed to examine the game's feasibility and preliminary efficacy. Results: The results showed that "Reverie" significantly reduced participants' stress levels over the intervention period (p=.016*), indicating a cumulative positive effect. In addition, the game demonstrated excellent user experience and was associated with improvements in cognitive emotion regulation strategies. Conclusions: This study proposes a Gen-AI driven design framework for serious games for stress relief. Besides, this pilot study provides initial support for the feasibility and promise of combining LLM-driven gameplay in a personalized digital intervention context.

翻译：背景：压力已成为普遍现象，严肃游戏正日益被视为减压的有效工具。然而，尽管生成式人工智能(Gen-AI)发展迅速，其在减压严肃游戏中的整合应用仍有待深入探索。目的：本研究旨在通过开发基于Unity引擎和ChatGPT的生成式人工智能驱动严肃游戏"Reverie"，填补这一研究空白，并初步评估其在减压、用户体验及认知情绪调节方面的有效性。方法：对20名处于中高压力水平的学生开展了为期14天的预实验研究。参与者将"Reverie"作为减压干预手段。通过评估压力水平、用户体验及认知情绪调节策略，检验游戏的可行性和初步疗效。结果：结果显示，"Reverie"在干预期间显著降低了参与者的压力水平(p=.016*)，表明其具有累积性正向效应。此外，该游戏展现出卓越的用户体验，并与认知情绪调节策略的改善相关。结论：本研究提出了一种用于减压严肃游戏的生成式人工智能驱动设计框架。同时，该预实验为将大语言模型驱动的游戏机制整合到个性化数字干预情境中的可行性和前景提供了初步证据。