History

We have several games either about history or that use history content. They are intended to increase interest in history. All are free and contain no ads.

History Cause and Effect

This is a set of 4 simple game variations that give the player an event and asks them to enter (type in) another event that either led to the given event or was a consequence of the given event. The player’s hypothesis is evaluated and scored. The games are online and can be played with 1-3 players either against each other or cooperatively.

There are 7 topics built in, but players can add any new topic from the World History Encyclopedia Timeline and history teachers can add their own topic with a list of events for students to play the games with. More details are provided here.

The Wiki Murders

This is a detection game, the player has to discover who,where,how. The locations, suspects, and potential weapons are all taken from history. Descriptions are sometimes realistic and sometimes whimsical.

This game is available in Google, Apple, and Windows app stores. More information can be found here.

First Light

The Wanderer game is less a game than a sorting task, maybe part of a game some day. The setting is the European Enlightenment, and the game contains 21 randomly-selected rooms (from a list of about 60), each with a dated event from the Enlightenment. There are 7 (this might vary with more play testing) people from the Enlightenment scattered throughout the game, lost, in the wrong place. The player’s job is to get them back to where they belong (to an event associated with them), then select key contributions they made from a list.

Play involves interviews with each character (free text, asking questions such as what they wrote about — almost all were writers) to figure out who they are (they cannot remember their names) so you can take them to the right room.

Each time a character gets to a room where they participated in the event, they remember who they are, and give you 5-8 facts about their writing or actions. You select key facts to put in your backpack, and go on to other characters.

When you have facts that you think are representative of Enlightenment thinking (max 7 — you can go with fewer), you can submit them for an enlightenment score. This ends the game.

To help you prepare, here is a list of the Enlightenment characters in the game:

There is a second ‘game’ or task, Passwords, with the same events, same map and rooms. Here, each door is protected by a password that is an important 1-word concept from the event inside the room.

Puddle Hopping

This game is available in Google and Apple app stores for Android and Apple mobile devices, and also available online (app versions are better). The app contains 4 games that use the same content. Within the app are 9 history topics, including objects from the British Museum, Literature, Movies, 14C and 15C Europe, Science.

The games include Strings, a timeline game; Clues, a trivia game; Buckets, a categorization game; and Rooms, a museum sorting game.

Google (Android): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.ideategames.IdeateGames
Apple app store (iOS): https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ideate-games/id1048474999?ls=1&mt=8
Online: https://ideategames.org/

To Samarkand

This is not a game, but an app to record your daily step count, and place your progress in the context of the Silk Roads. There is history content in the descriptions for some of the locations. This app is only available for Apple devices, in the Apple App Store.

More information is provided here.