For second language learners, anxiety poses a major hurdle in the use of the secondlanguage in a myriad of contexts, including in the classroom. Teachers and schools oftenmake use of technology in order to better serve their students in a variety of ways, andmany teachers chose to use gamified educational platforms in order to enhance theirclassrooms; however, second language anxiety remains pervasive. Since secondlanguage anxiety is a major hurdle for students, one should expect newly developedcourses and platforms to attempt to reduce negative affective states. Gamification ofeducational content is a flourishing industry with notable sites such as Duolingo that canbe counted among those that make use of it. This systematic review aims to determine ifspecific gamified elements can be found to be related to student anxiety and confidenceso that recommendations can be made to teachers and developers to further improvethose elements. The results of this analysis show that quests, narratives, and storytellingalong with more immersive gaming experiences commonly co-occur with classroomenvironments where students felt less anxious and more willing to communicate withtheir peers in their second language. Additionally, awards or points were commonlypresent with a decrease in anxiety and increase in confidence. Competition was notfound to be connected to decreases in anxiety, and this could be a significant area forimprovement among second language learning platforms as competition has beenpreviously shown to lead to anxiety, and in second language learners, it has also beenshown to lead to negative self-perception. This study posits that reducing competitiveelements of gamified platforms and increasing cooperative- and narrative-basedelements would lead to more equitable classrooms where second language students feelmore comfortable in expressing themselves.