Educational

It is 1928, and it is time for the glorious Soviet State to crush the Kulaks and bring the CCCP dragging and kicking into the Century of the Fruitbat, I mean, the 20th century. We must collectivize, industrialize, and electrify, Comrade, lest the forces of capitalist reaction overwhelm us in the inevitable world-struggle to come!

Relativistic Asteroids is just Asteroids -- but with (some) relativistic effects added -- specifically, length contraction and time dilation.

As your ship accelerates, the little triangle that represents it visibly shortens (length contraction), and if you rotate, contraction is retained in the direction of motion, but not the others.

Time dilation isn't particularly notable--except that your bullets travel a shorter distance (when fired in the direction of motion), presumably because, in their frame they "expire" more quickly relative to the reference frame.

“Serious” games usually have to balance between being “educational” and being “fun”. Third World Farmer presents itself as a greatly educational game, promising to teach the player the hardships of maintaining a family in a world full of corruption, war and diseases. But once played, it turns out that it’s fairly easy to be successful. And that’s exactly why this game is actually pretty fun for an “educational” game.

The Chinese Room is a little like Norman Juster's Phantom Tollbooth in interactive form. Taking place entirely in the realm of philosophical thought experiment, The Chinese Room tackles questions about the nature of perception, the foundations of ethical systems, and the theoretical basis of calculus. If you've ever wanted to meet Aristotle or Karl Marx in text adventure form, this is your opportunity.

Making History reminds me of the games from Paradox, most famously Europa Universalis. That's a bit of a paradox (hem hem), because Paradox has its own (excellent) WWII game, Hearts of Iron -- but HoI is very much a war game, and while military conflict is central to Making History, the war side of the game is much more abstracted, and at a more grand strategic level, and it pays much more attention to economics and diplomacy.

Designed to introduce issues of energy management and environmental protection to schoolchildren, ElectroCity allows the player to control a New Zealand town and its surrounding landscape -- building power plants, extracting fossil fuels, trading on the energy market, and setting conservation policies. At the end of 150 turns, the player is graded on the town's size, environmental cleanliness, energy supply, and citizen satisfaction. The finished town layout can be uploaded to the ElectroCity server, to be viewed and ranked against other submitted towns.

Game Tunnel's 2005 Sim Game of the Year

Books can be important; movies can be important. Games, however, are the degraded purview of violent male adolescents. Democracy cannot exist.

Except that it does, of course. It is not without flaw; but it's a game that every citizen of a democracy should play, to get a better gut understanding of the pressures faced by they leaders--and every citizen of a tyranny should play, to get a better gut understanding of why democracy, whatever its flaws, is better than the alternatives.

The name may make BCS sound dull, but actually, it's quite entertaining--and quite innovative. In a series of levels of increasing difficulty, you're challenged to build increasingly complicated bridges, then drive over them in a train--and if you haven't done a good enough job, watch it collapse. The key is that it's in 3D with a robust physics engine that simulates the stresses on bridge members in detail, and provides a nice view of the occasional disasters. It's no surprise that BCS won the "audience choice" award at the 2003 Independent Games Festival. (Mac and Linux versions, too.)