The past year hasn’t been easy for anyone, especially for students who were forced to shift to remote learning and stay at home. According to research by Mark Griffiths, Professor at Nottingham Trent University, video games can help students develop a plethora of life skills. With that, let’s take a look at some of the best examples of video games that can help educate students in fun and engaging ways.

• Portal 1 & 2

Portal is a puzzle platform series developed and published by Valve, best known for their work on the Half-Life series. It follows a girl on her quest for freedom in a dystopian future ruled by a maniacal AI. Both games are filled with dark humor and brain teasers, which can help students learn problem-solving, math, and special awareness.

• Ahnayro: The Dream World

Ahnayro is the closest thing to a real-world mystery you can solve alongside your child or student group. It is a cryptic puzzle game that

relies on historical facts and trivia, in addition to online resources and blogs for its puzzles. It can teach students a lot about world history, important individuals, and problem-solving.

• Scribblenauts

If you’re working with younger students, Scribblenauts is just the series you were looking for. This is a puzzle game series that is centered on spelling, writing, and creative thinking for its progression. You can introduce a reliable essay writing service to your students alongside Scribblenauts as a means to write papers or translate their texts.

• Civilization

Learning about geography, global history, and our planet as a whole can be done quite easily through Civilization games. These are strategy games in which players choose a country at the beginning of the game and try to develop it as much as possible.

• Little Big Planet

Little Big Planet is a sandbox gaming experience where students can create their own worlds and stages to play in. These games can help students develop their creativity, ideation, problem-solving, as well as long-term planning.

• Minecraft: Education Edition

Speaking of sandbox games, Minecraft is a one-of-a-kind educational game with endless learning possibilities. It is deceptively simple and can be played on a majority of PCs and devices without a problem. You can assign students various tasks that can help their resource management skills, teamwork, creativity, and even math and reading.

• Wordscapes

This is a simple yet intuitive and addicting game available for Android and iOS devices. The levels are designed to be played in short intervals, and students can learn new words, phrases, and terms on a daily basis effortlessly.

• Rabbits Coding

Rabbits Coding is a free game that allows students to learn about programming and software development in an approachable manner. The game is filled with puzzles based on popular programming languages and everyday coding issues, making it perfect for introductory learning about IT.

• Kerbal Space Program

Astronomy and space-related topics are at the back of the minds of many students, making Kerbal Space Program an excellent educational game to consider. The game revolves around the player’s ability to organize a successful space flight with real-world physics and aerodynamics involved in the gameplay loop.

• Any Licensed Lego Game

Lego has become synonymous with licensed video games over the past several years. Big blockbusters such as Harry Potter, Star Wars, and The Lord of the Rings all have their Lego games, which are available on both PC and consoles. These games are lighthearted puzzle-solving adventures suitable for any K-12 student. 

To Summarize

With 2021 underway, the definition of what an educational video game is has drastically changed compared to the past decade or so. Be sure to check these games out and see how well your students or children react to them – learning can and should be fun.

Bio: Henry Mcdowell is a professional content writer, blogger, and editor and is passionate about all things digital. He fills his time by writing articles, papers, and essays on a plethora of topics ranging from advertisement to pop-culture entertainment. In his spare time, Henry tends to play video games on PC and PS4.