Kahoot

Promoting knowledge acquisition, engagement, and knowledge assessment through game-based quiz mechanics.

Survival of the Best Fit

Promoting digital literacy and a critical understanding of algorithmic decision-making processes and bias in artificial intelligence.

Startup Essentials

The Startup Essentials simulation models the founding and management of a company using the example of a surfboard manufacturer. The thematic focus lies on the essential steps of starting a business—from ideation to business model development and financial and strategic planning. The goal is to convey economic relationships in a practical manner and promote entrepreneurial thinking. The main target group includes students in business-related programs, founders, and professionals who wish to train their business decision-making skills. As a serious game, Startup Essentials combines playful elements with a realistic learning approach, supporting interactive and application-oriented knowledge transfer. The game is based on a step-by-step decision-making process: Participants analyse market conditions, make financing decisions, and develop management strategies. The simulation was released in 2017 by TOPSIM GmbH and has been continuously developed since then.

Connect Rollout

Developing skills in international project management through simulation-based learning and systems thinking.

The Cascades Game

“The Cascades Game” is an interactive and educational social-simulation game for university settings. It aims to foster system thinking by introducing the concept of cascading climate impacts and policy responses to address and tackle them. The game was developed as part of the Project CASCADES (Cascading Climate risks: Towards adaptive and resilient European Societies) in 2023 and builds upon their empirical research and developed policy models (Strategic Simulations And Serious Game, 2024). Simulating a global food crisis in 2028, players take on the roles of different global stakeholders and become members of the “European Taskforce on global food supply”. Their goal is to develop recommendations on how to set regulations to counteract the global crisis. Therefore, they not only have to discuss, negotiate and agree on solutions but must also react to the latest political, economic and societal changes.

Per Anhalter durch das Immunsystem

Teaching fundamental immunological processes and their interactions in a playful learning environment.

Ab durchs QM

Applying theoretical concepts of quality management in real-world scenarios to prepare for exams and foster transferable skills.

Remember. The Children of Bullenhuser Damm

The digital remembrance game “Remember. The Children of Bullenhuser Damm” is based on the history of the Bullenhuser Damm Memorial in Hamburg, which commemorates 20 Jewish children and 28 adults murdered by the SS in 1945. Before their murder, the children were subjected to pseudo-medical experiments at the Neuengamme concentration camp. The game introduces young people to the history of the memorial, focusing not on the crime but on remembrance culture and the question, “How is this history relevant to me today?” Players experience different perspectives on remembrance through the eyes of five students from the school Bullenhuser Damm in the late 1970s. They uncover traces that reveal the background to this unimaginable crime. The game complements visits to the memorial, encourages reflection, and promotes active participation in remembrance culture.

Celeste

Celeste is a critically acclaimed platformer that explores themes of mental health, perseverance, and self-discovery. Players take on the role of Madeline, a young woman climbing a mountain while confronting both external obstacles and internal struggles with anxiety and self-doubt. The game appeals to a wide audience, especially those interested in mental health narratives, challenging gameplay, and emotional storytelling. As a serious game, Celeste raises awareness of mental health issues through its narrative and mechanics, which mirror real-world challenges like anxiety and self-acceptance. By combining these themes with precise platforming, the game encourages reflection on personal growth and resilience. The gameplay is simple yet demanding: players navigate levels filled with hazards using intuitive controls and mechanics such as mid-air dashing and wall climbing. Success requires persistence, skill, and learning from failure. Celeste was developed by Maddy Thorson and the team at Extremely OK Games and released in January 2018.

Signs of the Sojourner

"Signs of the Sojourner" is a narrative-driven card game developed by Echo Dog Games and released in 2020. The game revolves around the themes of communication and relationships. The player assumes the role of a character who takes over their mother's shop after her death and embarks on journeys to collect new goods. Along the way, the player encounters various characters with whom they interact by playing cards. The deck of cards represents the character's experiences and relationships and evolves over the course of the game. The story of "Signs of the Sojourner" is very relatable through the protagonist's relationship with their mother and a close friend. These emotional connections give the narrative a vivid and profound layer, motivating the player to collect goods from the game world for the shop. This personal journey and its associated challenges make the story not only captivating but also meaningful. Additionally, the game offers multiple endings depending on the decisions you make, which adds to its replayability and depth. Each choice influences the direction of the story and the relationships, leading to a variety of possible conclusions. A particularly emotional moment in the game was when the initial attempts to gather enough goods to keep the shop running failed. These moments of disappointment and frustration, when the protagonist was forced to give up, deepened the emotional aspect of the story. They illustrate the real-life challenges one can face, making the successes in the game all the more meaningful.

You’re Just Imagining It

You’re Just Imagining It (often stylized in lowercase) is a short (~30 min), free-to-play simulation that immerses players in the challenges of living with an undiagnosed chronic illness. Developed by the indie creator npckc in 2024, the game was inspired by the developer’s own diagnosis of a chronic health condition (you’re just imagining it on Steam, 2024). Acknowledging the creator’s caution that “this game is not meant to be medical advice” and “it’s also not very fun,” the game is designed not for leisure but as an experiential learning tool and personal expression (npckc, 2024). The game has minimalistic art and narrative, and its thematic focus is on the frustration, fatigue, and uncertainty faced by chronically ill patients who are seeking validation and treatment. The educational objective is to foster empathy and awareness of these struggles among players by allowing them to walk in the shoes of someone with an invisible illness. The target group thus ranges from those in health-related fields (who can use the game to better understand patient perspectives) to anyone interested in narrative-driven empathy games.

My Child Lebensborn

My Child Lebensborn (first released in May 2018 and developed by Sarepta Studio and Teknopilot) is a narrative-driven serious game that investigates the post-war fate of Children Born of War (CBOW). The player adopts Klaus/Karin, a seven-year-old growing up in rural Norway in 1951 whose German parentage makes them a target for bullying, gossip, and official discrimination (Children Born of War Project, 2024). The main objective of the game is to foster discussion around the experience of these children by immersing players in the day-to-day challenges of caring for a child who is ostracized by society and exploring how hatred and prejudice can turn even innocent children into post-war victims (Festøy, 2023; Children Born of War Project, 2024). The game is based on the historical experiences of CBOW, which were gathered through interviews and assistance from the CBOW research network (Festøy, 2023; Children Born of War Project, 2024). The game is entirely digital, but a specialized classroom version launched in 2023 includes printable teaching materials on bullying, human dignity, World War II, and ethics for educational use (My Child Lebensborn EDU, 2025).

Elegy for a Dead World

Elegy for a Dead World is an interactive experience that functions as a guided writing simulator where players explore landscapes inspired by Romantic poetry. The game’s title alludes to Byron’s poem Darkness, which contemplates the end of civilization and human frailty in the face of an indifferent universe. The worlds present visual thematic prompts that encourage players to construct narratives about the fate of the lost civilizations that once inhabited these spaces. The game’s primary audiences are students, educators, and creative writers. It fits into the category of serious educational games because its design emphasizes literacy and creative expression. This positions the game as a tool for teaching writing that fosters imagination and encourages interpretation while aligning with the serious games zeitgeist. The game is an experiment in digital authorship. It provides a framework where players can choose to follow structured prompts or abandon them entirely in favor of free-form composition. This transforms the game into an open-ended literary exercise that bridges interactive media with creative writing.

The Art of Science

The Art of Science is a trivia game for the nerdy and knowledgeable. With categories of Physics, Biology, Technology, Mathematics, Chemistry, and Other Science that all aim at the undergraduate or higher level, this is not a game for the unknowing. It has an interesting point system as well, but the real potency comes from the challenge and diversity of the questions. This game should appeal to the undergraduate science student or instructor looking to see how well-rounded students are. It can be important to recognize what students know and how broadly their knowledge extends. The Art of Science can provide such insights. The game works like a Trivial Pursuit-style game, with players on teams taking turns asking and answering questions from a variety of categories. There is a scoring system that allows you to take fewer questions from categories that you find challenging and incorporate them for your win condition. This introduces a tactical component to the gameplay as well. The game was developed by Acabo Games and released by Terror Bull Games in 2010.

Potions!

Potions! "is a puzzle game designed to improve the understanding of hypothesis testing." (k20, 2025) In this game, players are attempting to blend different potions together to save dying mythical creatures. Using one- and two-tailed tests with different potions, the player can see whether their concoction has an effect, is ineffective, or causes damage to the creatures in the test group before attempting to apply it to the entire population. This game should be appealing to introductory statistics classes and students willing to explore concepts with a playful intent. Potions! has been created with hypothesis testing firmly in mind, and all controls and actions focus on associated outcomes. The game has been developed by K20 Center at the University of Oklahoma (k20center.ou.edu).

Pandemic

Pandemic, and its offshoots, are collaborative games with the focus of stopping a global pandemic from erupting. Pandemic is not designed as a serious game but has been created and sold to the public as entertainment, which it does well. However, Pandemic is an excellent game to simulate complex environments, the spread of infectious disease, and to build collaborative and cooperative problem-solving skills. The game was developed by Matt Leacock of Z-Man Games and first released in 2008. New versions in different languages, incorporating new character options, and changing the gameplay to incorporate persistent changes based on choices made have been added up to 2023. The game principle uses a random card draw to seed disease around the globe and then adds another deck to further infect and amplify existing diseases. Players have attributes and actions to use to slow the progress of working within the confines of the random spread and increase.

uMed: Your Choice

"uMed: Your Choice" is a serious moral game developed in cooperation with the Institute for Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine and the UZH Digital Society Initiative Zurich (Christen et al., 2021). Players follow the story in the role of young medical assistants and make decisions regarding the well-being of patients and interactions with them, staff and relatives. The main focus is to improve moral sensitivity, integrity and professional decision-making. It was developed for medical students in clinical ethics courses and serves as a complementary educational tool. Its dialog-based gameplay allows participants to make decisions, explore different outcomes (Eichinger et al., 2022). "uMed" emphasizes self-study combined with reflective group discussions, aligning with the ethos of serious games to foster engagement and applied learning (Christen et al., 2021). Therefore, it combines content on medical ethics (educational) with game features like rules/goals, fantasy, challenge, sensory stimuli, and player autonomy. With feedback and reflection, the game fosters sustained motivation and ethical reasoning (Eichinger et al., 2022; Caserman et al., 2020).

Method Choice

Method Choice is a serious game that helps educators collaboratively explore and discuss debriefing methods for game-based learning. Many debriefing methods exist, but educators often struggle to discover new approaches and to evaluate which methods fit their specific teaching contexts. Instead of passively presenting methods, Method Choice lets participants make their preferences visible through shared movement and discover methods playfully. The game adapts a Ouija-board-style mechanic from Die Geister, die wir rufen*, a serious game about generational conflicts in organizations. Participants place their fingers on a shared slider and pull toward categories representing their interests. The physical tension makes differing preferences immediately visible and opens up conversations about pedagogical approaches in a playful way.

Faciliation Toolkit

The Facilitation Toolkit is a collection of method cards for educators and facilitators who lead game-based learning activities. The Game Didaktik Project at Leuphana University Lüneburg developed these cards because many instructors lack practical knowledge of facilitation techniques, even as interest in serious games and gamification is growing in higher education. The cards are organized in five categories reflecting typical phases of facilitated learning sessions: icebreakers, knowledge activation, energizers, debriefing, and discussion formats. Each category has its own color and symbol for quick identification for users with color vision deficiency. The toolkit builds on the concept of frame games (Thiagarajan, 2004), reusable activity structures that can be filled with different content depending on the learning context. The toolkit includes blank cards. Facilitators can add their own methods or invite workshop participants to contribute techniques from their practice. The collection grows with use.

Explain It Like An Acrobat

Developed in 2025 by a team of the Game-Didaktik project at Leuphana University in Lüneburg, the taboo-inspired card game "Explain It Like An Acrobat" encourages players to think outside the box. Contrary to the original taboo game, Explain It Like An Acrobat challenges the players linguistically by using ten instead of the usual five forbidden words, requiring flexible descriptive strategies. In teams, the players take turns trying to explain and guess everyday object terms while avoiding using the forbidden words on the cards. It is primarily intended to promote creative expressions and enable participants to define everyday objects from a different perspective. As a serious game, it thus combines playful competition with educational value while also providing the opportunity to develop eloquence and language competence. Designed for diverse groups, the game promotes shared experiences that are both fun and strengthen cooperation.