Serious Games Catalogue

Sponsored by games2train.com, the goal of this site is to catalog the growing number of video and computer games whose primary purpose is something other than to entertain. It currently has ove 200 games catalogued and claims to have an additional 300 that have been identified but not yet catalogued. Games are not critiqued or evaluated.

Games

America's Army provides civilians with an inside perspective and a virtual role in today's premier land force: the U.S. Army. The game is designed to provide an accurate portrayal of Soldier experiences.The game is an entertaining way for young adults to be educated about the U.S. Army and see some of the career opportunities available to Soldiers in the U.S. Army — all this as a virtual Soldier. America's Army emphasizes teamwork, values and responsibility as means to achieving the goals.

AquaMOOSE 3D is a virtual environment designed to let you play around with mathematical ideas, and explore connections between math and art. You are a fish, and you specify your motion in the virtual world mathematically. For example, to swim in a circle, specify movement on a sine curve along the x-axis and a cosine curve along the z-axis. Play with ring tracks and courses in which you try to swim mathematically through a set of rings. Make new ring track challenges and test your friends.

Armadillo Run is a physics-based puzzle game. You have to build structures with the purpose of getting an armadillo to a certain point in space. There is a selection of building materials, each with different properties, which can be combined to form almost anything. The realistic physics simulation gives you the freedom to solve each level in many different ways.

Inspired by the work of prominent Japanese neuroscientist Dr. Ryuta Kawashima, the Brain Age games feature activities designed to help stimulate your brain and give it the workout it needs like solving simple math problems, counting currency, drawing pictures on the Nintendo DS touch screen, and unscrambling letters.

Years ago, meteors struck San Saurian, filling the air with thick and filthy dust. So a mighty wind machine was made to help everyone breathe. But Mr. Rexo has stolen the parts for the machine, forcing other dinosaurs to guard the pieces!
You must help Bronkie and Rexo find the lost machine pieces by blowing away dust with your lungs, and hitting enemies with your dusters, before the dust returns and everyone chokes on the dust! But don't run into cigarrette smoke or dust storms, otherwise your vision will get darker, and you'll have a hard time finding out where to go, running into enemies all around!
Along the way you'll learn about asthma and how to prevent it, as well as how to react if you're suffering from an asthma attack.

A tile-based, puzzle video game that teaches logic. The game consists of a series of 148 two-dimensional levels that feature the player character, Nerdy Chip McCallahan, often called just Chip, and various game elements such as computer chips, buttons, locked doors and lethal monsters. The game was developed for a broad range of systems and was first released in 1989.

With its groundbreaking game series, Dance, Dance revolution (DDR), Konami has created a fun and healthy way for children and adults to become more active and realize the benefits of physical activity.

DimensionM™ is an immersive video game world that engages students in the instruction and learning of mathematics. Pre-algebra and algebra objectives are covered through a series of missions that bring math into a world that today's students understand. Students become so captivated in solving problems that they forget they're learning but they don't forget what they've learned.

Dimenxian is an educational game using a first person action adventure engine, and focuses on algebra I teachings. It has been designed primarily for middle and high school aged students. The story line is that a bio-digital virus has been released on a remote island and threatens to infect the world’s eco-system and destroy mankind. The player's goal is to disengage the virus while defending himself from the Sentinels and to restore the island to its natural environment.

DoomEd is a single-player first person shooter learning game that combines science and history with FPS action, taking players through the horror of bio-terrorism and WWII chemical experimentation gone wrong.

EASe Offroad is an exciting driving game that takes the player through a lush landscape in search of glowing 100 and 500-point targets, while EASe music plays automatically in the background. EASe Games represent a revolution in the development of software for children on the Autism spectrum and all other children diagnosed with Auditory Hypersensitivity, Hyperacusis, Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD) or Sensory Integration Disorder.

Eyewitness is interactive situation simulation software. Through high resolution 3D computer graphic, this software, together with use of first person perspective lets users experience the Nanking Massacre personally. Compared with the book or photograph, this software can even let people becomes part of the massacre so have better feeling and understanding about Nanking Massacre.

Food Force is an Edumarket game published by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in 2005. Players take on missions to distribute food in a famine affected country and to help it to recover and become self-sufficient again. At the same time they learn about hunger in the real world and the WFP's work to prevent it.

A virtual reality-based, 3D undersea exploration adventure that enables players to virtually swim with sea turtles and tropical fish as they hunt for hidden treasure. The game has been shown to distract children suffering from chronic pain or undergoing painful operations in real life with a calming underwater virtual reality.

Incident Commander, released by BreakAway and the Department of Justice in 2007, was a ground-breaking training tool that employed PC game technology to allow first responders to train anytime, anywhere to coordinate a multi-agency response to a natural or manmade disaster. We've enhanced training for over 30,000 first responders already - and now we're about to transform it entirely.

Kotodama is a concept for a language learning videogame developed at Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center. The full version of Kotodama is a role-playing game in which players must master concepts of Japanese language and culture to gain in-game abilities. Through speech recognition input, players use spoken Japanese to accomplish game goals. Kotodama is targeted towards high school age kids with an interest in videogames and Japanese anime.

The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis was the first title to be released in the series. The game is set out as a series of puzzles split into legs of three which increase in difficulty as the game is played. Zoombinis’ captivating gameplay features math without numbers. Solving Zoombinis puzzles uses the process of mathematical thinking. This process includes organizing information, reasoning with evidence, and testing systematically.

Mario's Time Machine is an educational game based on history. Bowser and his minions have stolen 15 artifacts from history and it's up to Mario to retrieve them all, by answering questions based on that artifact and return them to their owner by using Bowser's time machine

McDonald's Video Game is one of a new genre of games known as "anti-advergames." The new titles satirize big companies and question corporate polices ranging from how cattle are raised to low pay for workers. Making money in a corporation like McDonald’s is not simple at all! Behind every sandwich there is a complex process you must learn to manage: from the creation of pastures to the slaughter, from the restaurant management to the branding.

Oiligarchy is the latest satirical management game from Paolo Pedercini and la Molleindustria. You are the CEO of a major international oil company, your job is to make money: Democracy, environment, and global economic health are irrelevant. Explore, drill, corrupt governments, hire mercenaries, engage in covert operations, fix elections (which are clearly broken without you) and most of all: have fun.

Operation Neptune combines platform action with educational puzzles. The game helps build a solid math and problem solving foundation with whole numbers, fractions, decimals, ratios, and percentages. Problem solving hints, calculator, and customization options are all only a keystroke away. Real-life problems such as using area, distance and volume to make measurements help kids see how math can be used in the real world.

PeaceMaker challenges you to succeed as a leader where others have failed. Experience the joy of bringing peace to the Middle East or the agony of plunging the region into disaster. PeaceMaker will test your skills, assumptions and prior knowledge. Play it and you will never read the news the same way again.

Quest Atlantis (QA) is a learning and teaching project that uses a 3D multi-user environment to immerse children, ages 9-12, in educational tasks. Building on strategies from online role-playing games, QA combines strategies used in the commercial gaming environment with lessons from educational research on learning and motivation. It allows users to travel to virtual places to perform educational activities (known as Quests), talk with other users and mentors, and build virtual personae. A Quest is an engaging curricular task designed to be entertaining yet educational.

Re-Mission (featuring Roxxi, the intrepid nanobot), is a challenging, 3D "shooter" with 20 levels that takes the player on a journey through the body of young patients with different kinds of cancer. Created by leading video game developers and animators in collaboration with scientific and medical consultants and HopeLab staff, this state-of-the-art game is designed to be cool and fun, while helping players to increase their personal knowledge about cancer and improve their confidence in their ability to manage their cancer.

Real Lives 2007 is an empathy-building real world, real life simulation that challenges your life skills as you make difficult, high-stakes choices that lead to your success, or failure. You might be born anyone, anywhere on Earth. You might die as an infant, you might make it to old age. You might be able to marry the person of your dreams, and have a rewarding job, or you could be stuck in poverty. Be born, live an exciting life, and die. Then do it again. And again. Learn about the world as you live your Real Lives around the world, one life-altering decision at a time.

The River City curriculum unit is based on students collaboratively investigating a virtual "world" consisting of a city with a river running through it, different forms of terrain that influence water runoff, houses, industries, and institutions such as a hospital and a university. River City contains over fifty digital objects from the Smithsonian’s collection, plus "data collection stations" that provide detailed information about water samples at various spots in the world.

Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its Residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by a total of 9,428,057 Residents from around the globe.

Tactical Iraqi^TM is a computer-based, self-paced, learning program that in about 80 hours teaches English-speaking people totally unfamiliar with Iraqi Arabic how to speak enough to accomplish tasks and missions in Arabic.

The Typing of the Dead is a fun and addictive typing "game" from SEGA, essentially taking House of the Dead 2 and replacing the player's gun with a keyboard. Typing Of The Dead is a crazy, irreverent game, and such madness needs to be cherished whenever it appears. There's definitely an intrinsic, enjoyable quality to blowing off a zombie's head by typing the words "Rhythm Method." While some may not immediately see the appeal or value of a game that is played by typing, all it takes is five minutes on the keyboard to turn a crowd of naysayers into party people having a good time.

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego is, of course, a very simple game at its core. At the start of each game, you learn that some member of the Villains' International League of Evil (V.I.L.E.) has stolen some priceless world treasure (an ancient Aztec calendar, the Stanley Cup, the Eiffel Tower elevators, it's all up for grabs), and it's your job as a member of the ACME detective agency to run out and steal one of your own, quick track down the criminal and bring him or her to justice within a certain time limit.

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