The digital media culture has spread into a large proportion of the world’s population, so that today it is less likely to encounter someone who never has come in touch with it than the other way around. The same is true for digital games. This thesis examines whether serious games and gamification are suitable tools for learning Japanese kanji. For this purpose, two examples, on the one hand, the existing serious game DragonTale and a gamification project developed for this thesis, were considered and analyzed. To investigate whether the approaches can create an entertaining and motivating learning environment that enables learners to increase their skills and performance, a user study took place for each project. The focus of the studies was on examining measurable effects, such as learning success, as well as the game and user experience.