SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Virtual Real.
Sec. Virtual Reality in Medicine
This article is part of the Research TopicTransform Medicine through Extended Reality (XR): Technologies, Education, Ethics, and Clinical ApplicationsView all 4 articles
Gamified Virtual Reality in Post-stroke Neurorehabilitation: A Systematic Review
Provisionally accepted
Alin Moldoveanu1
Iulia Stanica1
Cristian Lambru1*
Ana Magdalena Anghel1Silviu Stăncioiu1Anca Morar1Victor Asavei1
Lupu Robert Gabriel2
Delia Cinteză3,4- 1Polytechnic University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania
- 2Universitatea Tehnica Gheorghe Asachi din Iasi, Iași, Romania
- 3National Institute of Rehabilitation, Physical Medicine and Balneoclimatology, Bucharest, Romania
- 4Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, “Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Bucharest, Romania
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Huge and increasing global rehabilitation needs, affecting over 2.4 billion people, require the mainstream adoption of the latest innovative technological solutions, including but not limited to virtual reality (VR), robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), or games. This systematic review focuses on the use and potential of gamified VR in post-stroke neurorehabilitation to effectively address patient engagement and motivation, scalability, costs, and the scarcity of specialists. Our review, conducted using the PRISMA methodology, identified 4856 records narrowed down to 66 key studies from 5 major databases. These studies were categorized and analysed based on the technologies used, game mechanics, gamification techniques, adaptation to the user, and evaluation procedure. Our findings draw significant conclusions for each of these aspects and ultimately highlight the potential of gamified VR to become a mainstream neurorehabilitation technology for post-stroke patients, scalable to societal needs and improving recovery outcomes. Our review concludes with a discussion of the future directions and implications for clinical practice in neurorehabilitation using gamified VR technologies.
Keywords: Exergame, Gamification, neuro-motor rehabilitation, Stroke, virtual reality
Received: 01 Nov 2025; Accepted: 26 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Moldoveanu, Stanica, Lambru, Anghel, Stăncioiu, Morar, Asavei, Robert Gabriel and Cinteză. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Cristian Lambru
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.