Students love opportunities to sink their teeth into problems that don't have clear answers, or to tackle tough challenges that test their deduction skills and knowledge. It's often out of this challenging murkiness that new perspectives and ideas emerge. Treat your students to these terrific, fun critical thinking games and watch how they develop thinking skills and more complex understandings of the world. On this list are puzzle games that help students solve problems and think ahead, story-based games that help students understand and unpack local and global issues, and strategy games that get students to manage time and resources.
Bottom Line: For kids who are new to chess but want to learn how to play, this fun intro to the game provides a well-done tutorial combined with a light overarching storyline.
Bottom Line: Instantly engaging and super accessible to learners of many ages and abilities, Crayon Physics Deluxe fuses conceptual science learning with a brand of playful problem solving that demands creativity.
Solve problems, puzzles, brain teasers while creating wacky machines
Bottom Line: Hands-on problem-solving leads to great fun and independent learning with the right curricular wraparound to connect what kids are doing with what they need to know.
Spiraling sandbox of adventure and creation gets kids to dig deep
Bottom Line: An irresistible and seemingly limitless incubator for 21st century skills that, with a little guidance, can chart new courses for learning.
Flex alchemical muscles in amusing, discovery-based puzzler
Bottom Line: This amusing puzzle game encourages creativity, perseverance, and systems thinking, and with creative integration it can build interest in math, science, history, and literature.
Music producing game balances fun with critical thinking and planning
Bottom Line: Students will have a blast with the music production and band-managing theme that carries with it some useful lessons in 21st century skills.
Refinement of strategy game formula supports historical exploration
Bottom Line: Like any consumer-oriented game, this experience will absorb and delight students far more than "educational" games, but it'll require open-minded and creative teaching.
Authentic space agency sim focuses on logistics, planning
Bottom Line: This sim is backed by major space agencies, so it's a neat and trustworthy way to learn about the challenges of past and future space exploration.
Brilliant, charming puzzler challenges kids' ELA and math skills
Bottom Line: It's on Nintendo DS so it's not easy to weave into a classroom, but it's worth it, bridging ELA and math in complex puzzles guaranteed to absorb students.
Best entry in classic strategy series might not be best for classrooms
Bottom Line: As with all games in this series, Civilization VI is a great learning experience with the right support, but older, cheaper versions may be more practical for classrooms.
Provocative, first-person look at poverty builds empathy
Bottom Line: It'll need some scaffolding, but for students ready for the subject matter it's a great -- if sobering -- way to illustrate to students the daily realities and struggles of poverty in America.
Bottom Line: Lots of potential and perhaps much better in a year or so of updates; use this in a class about space exploration and the harsh realities of colonization.
Charming political campaign sim mixes data analysis and civics
Bottom Line: It's a highly entertaining and surprisingly deep way to help students see the strategy -- as well as ethical choices -- involved in elections.
Unassuming editorial sim elegantly exposes the business of bias
Bottom Line: What this game lacks in pizzazz it makes up for in smarts, and it's certain to get students thinking and talking about bias and media politics.
