Exciting learning games: 12 tips from our expert

Gaming and learning go together better today than ever before. In our selection of the best learning games, you”ll find twelve examples of exciting insights and new experiences that you shouldn”t miss out on.

Once school is over, most people”s desire to learn plummets: After all, too many boring lessons have just been overcome! Many people don”t like learning games because they remind them of their school days. If the knowledge is too obviously slapped in the players” faces, certain parallels to the unloved frontal teaching can hardly be avoided.

With the games from our list, however, such frustration does not arise in the first place! Excitement, challenge and fun are at the forefront here. Most of the time you won”t even notice that you”re picking up a thing or two along the way. And maybe you”ll even discover topics that will give you a few additional aha-experiences away from the PC!

1. Cell to Singularity – Evolution never ends

In the free-to-play clicker game Cell to Singularity – Evolution never ends, you trace the development of life on earth from the primordial soup to mankind. In addition, you control the development of our civilisation from the Stone Age to space travel, fill the Mesozoic game section with all kinds of dinosaurs and explore our solar system including the satellites of the most important planets.

As with all clicker games, you generate game resources with every click, which you put into new achievements, species and research. There is also a short explanation for each new achievement: What is hermaphroditism, what are the advantages of thumbs for humans and why do fish benefit from fins? Collecting resources also continues offline, and you can restart the evolution simulation again and again to significantly increase your yield with extra bonuses.

2. Bee Simulator

The friendly honey producers next door are the focus of Bee Simulator as a honey-collecting bee, you save your hive from destruction in the action-packed story. To do this, you explore the open game world, complete mini-games such as races, fights against nasty wasps and collecting challenges.
You even have to prove yourself in the bee dance, where you have to memorise and copy the different movements of the opponents. Thanks to two difficulty levels, even children can enjoy getting up close and personal with Maia the bee – the Bee Simulator is designed to be fun for children and less fact-heavy.

3rd Cooking Simulator

If it”s taking longer in the restaurant again, it could be that the kitchen is on fire! After the first few hours in the Cooking Simulator at the latest, this scenario should not seem so unlikely to you, because the path from raw ingredients to the finished meal can sometimes be a very long one: chopping, preparing, mixing, cooking and serving!

In a realistically designed professional kitchen, you unlock up to 80 recipes and gradually learn to prepare increasingly complex dishes to satisfy demanding customers. If you”re already burning pasta water, you”ll get a good insight into what goes on in the kitchen and, thanks to the physics engine, you”ll also discover completely painlessly what can go wrong in cooking.

4. wingspan

In Wingspan everything revolves around the diversity and abilities of our feathered friends, just like the board game that gave it its name. In the turn-based, relaxed card game, you have to lure them into your nature reserve and settle them in different habitats. In addition, you collect bird food, let the birds lay eggs and draw new cards with which you can expand your action options. Each bird has unique abilities that give you a greater resource yield and symbioses that fill your account with victory points faster.
Each cute animated bird has interesting facts like wingspan, origin and more. You can also hear the bird”s call when you play the cards. Instead of filling your reserves on your own, you can compete against friends in an online lobby or against other players in a more relaxed and competitive way.

5 Project Hospital

The more you expand your hospital, the more complex it can become to find the true cause of illness. In addition, there are plenty of emergencies that also require quick action. The isometric, simple graphics are not the best, but the realism is close enough to the everyday hospital life and the diagnostic detective game of real doctors to offer more than just an interesting insight.

6. 80 Days

Jules Verne”s adventure novel “Journey Around the Earth in 80 Days”, published in 1873, was the model for 80 Days and tells the story of a daring wager: adventurer Phileas Fogg claims in his club that he can circumnavigate the globe in just 80 days. In the role of the loyal valet Passepartout, you manage the eccentric gentleman”s journey, bribing, haggling, organising and begging to win the almost impossible race against time.

Every decision you make affects the journey. You can visit a total of 170 different cities around the globe and explore them in an interactive story. No two journeys are the same, 80 Days offers a high replay value and always new challenges.

7th Farming Simulator 22

Without the stench of cowsheds, pig manure and freshly manured fields so common in rural areas, Farming Simulator 22 gives you a good insight into the life of modern farmers.

Whether you turn to livestock farming, a classic farm with rotational cultivation, fortstwirtschaft or a vineyard, thanks to authentic farming equipment from renowned manufacturers, you will always stay on top of the times when sowing, fertilising, mulching and harvesting. The change of seasons adds seasonal challenges due to the weather. These show how time-consuming it still is to farm successfully today.

8. Through the Darkest of Times

With the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Reich Chancellor in 1933, you start out in Through the Darkest of Times as the head of a civilian resistance group. You seek support, distribute leaflets and carry out actions to make other citizens aware of the Nazis” atrocities. In addition to decision-making sequences in which you react to historical events and incidents from the reality of people”s lives at the time, the strategic part of the game takes up a lot of space.

On a map of Berlin, you place your close comrades-in-arms and assign them tasks according to their abilities and characteristics: An ardent socialist can best win support in the working-class milieu, while strong group members are more likely to be entrusted with tangible jobs. Don”t let the comic book look fool you, Through The Darkest Of Times serves up crunchy strategy with plenty of bitter, historical moments where the right tactics will make the difference.

9 Plague Inc: Evolved

Mankind has had its day in Plague Inc: Evolved your task is to eradicate civilisation in the most efficient way possible using deadly plagues, bioweapons, mind control or a zombie infestation. The game world, designed very realistically in cooperation with experts from the WHO, CEPI and GOARN, presents you with many different challenges.

After all, your plague must be equally successful in all climatic zones, spread in as many ways as possible and much more. In co-op mode, you compete against humanity together, or in The Cure DLC, you use all the tools at humanity”s disposal to save the world from a deadly epidemic until vaccines are available.

10th Kerbal Space Programme

In Kerbal Space Program you fly to the moon with little green men – at least in theory. Because the complex space flight simulation with a precise physics engine demands much more from you than simply building a rocket for the moon flight. You have to manage your rocket launch centre, build various flying objects, navigate in space, research and expand your station.

The building and flying parts are especially demanding, as you have to pay attention to the centre of gravity and the weight of your rocket so that it doesn”t explode right after take-off or the gravity keeps you close to the planet. In the extensive career mode, you also take on increasingly tricky missions and steadily expand your rocket centre.

11 Democracy 4

If you are no longer satisfied with the performance of the government in view of current political decisions, simply try your luck yourself in Democracy 4. As president or prime minister, you control the fate of your country and ensure the well-being of your citizens through various decrees. Opinions, desires and prejudices of the electorate are mapped by a neural network so that you can easily track the reactions to your decisions.

No one is ever equally satisfied, your decisions quickly become a challenging balancing act between many different interests, and some well-intentioned ideas become poorly made reality. This brings you frighteningly close to the functioning of real democracies – after all, these also consist primarily of compromises that are acceptable to the vast majority of people.

Apart from that, the political sandbox also offers you the opportunity to see how well a state functions without taxes or what happens when people are oppressed by too many laws.

12. Microsoft Flight Simulator

For those tempted by the skies, there”s no better way right now than Microsoft Flight Simulator to familiarise yourself with piloting different types of aircraft around the world in   realistic weather conditions. In the huge open game world, you will fly to up to 37,000 generated airports and view sights such as the Cheops Pyramid, the Eiffel Tower or Ayers Rock from the air.

A change from just flying around comes with 24 landing challenges at challenging airports and three wilderness flights where you navigate by sight only, and different discovery flights. Realistically modelled cockpits, live weather and the physics engine round off the game experience trimmed to realism.