Learning Games

I went to grade school in the early years of VGA graphics. Oregon Trail, Where in (whatever iteration it may be) is Carmen San Diego, even 7th Guest and Return to Zork were all introduced to me at school. While these games use intellect, they can hardly be labeled "educational." I played Math Blaster, even thought I would have preferred Master Blaster.

Recently, I got to thinking. Educational games have to have become better over the years, right?

I want to introduce a couple of educational games that have managed to catch my attention.

Typing Games:

Z-Type - Control a ship constantly bombarded with oncoming asteroids and ships that can only be destroyed by typing out corresponding words. It's like missile command, if instead of a track ball, the game had a keyboard for a missile defense system. Score is determined by the number of items destroyed and a combo meter is reset for even a single mistake. The difficulty ramps up quickly and I have found it to be as entertaining as it is re-playable (read: infinitely).

Typing of The Dead - This was released on the Sega Dreamcast. We can still hope that one day it will be made compatible with modern machines and re-released, but don't hold your breath; Sega seems perfectly happy releasing the same pack of Genesis classics on every new system and never dipping into long lost treasures like this one and Power Stone. Typing of the Dead is a light gun game, but instead of the light gun, you have a keyboard that murders zombies with every correct keystroke. It's bloody, violent and an absolutely fantastic typing game. It's hard, if not impossible to find legally.

Typeracer - Think you have mastered typing at high velocity? Nope, like all other games on the internet, some guy in a country you can't find on a map is going to show you just how bad you suck. Typeracer give you a paragraph and a bar that shows your progress in relation to the people, represented by cars on a track. It's fun to get flustered as you see a competitor pull ahead. Winning can be more satisfying than a kill streak in the best shooter as it comes with some real bragging rights. Do yourself a favor, get some friends together, and have a great race in Typeracer.

I will be honest, I haven't done enough research to recommend too many other games. From my Steam collection, I would argue for World of Goo and to a significantly lesser extent, Worms. I suggest that both teach physics. Worms does so with rockets and propulsion and World of Goo does so with building structures of goo.

On a final note, I recently backed a Kickstarter project that promises to teach me programming through a game. I have my doubts, but if it works, great.

Hopefully everyone can find a game to their liking, I personally cannot say enough about Z-type.