The best educational games

Facts in Action (1992) is what happens when education puts on a lab coat and decides to become a video game. Designed to teach while you play, it blends quizzes, problem-solving, a...

Gertrude's Secrets is an early educational adventure that belongs to the fascinating period when computers were beginning to find their way into children's learning. Rather than pr...

Gumboots Australia is a delightful educational romp that turns geography into a cheerful scavenger hunt. You travel across Australia answering questions, solving simple challenges,...

Music Construction Set is an influential early music composition program that lets users create, edit, and arrange musical pieces on a personal computer. Rather than simply playing...

Mystery at the Museums turns a museum into the setting for an engaging detective adventure where players investigate strange events among exhibits, artifacts, and suspicious charac...

Quarky & Quaysoo's Turbo Science is a 1992 educational game that tries to make science more entertaining by adding colorful characters, experiments, and the sort of playful present...

Super Solvers: Treasure Cove combines educational challenges with the classic appeal of searching for treasure. Players explore colorful locations, solve problems, answer questions...

Borland Eureka: the Solver is an abandoned text-based application developed by Borland Software Corporation and released in 1987 for DOS. The product is designed to solve complex p...

Do you find spreadsheets thrilling? Does the idea of profit margins make your heart race? Then Business Simulator is your kind of party. It’s all about running a faceless com...

EcoQuest 2 takes its environmental message seriously but packages it in a way that’s engaging rather than preachy. You explore lush rainforest environments, solving puzzles t...

Castle of Dr. Brain is a puzzle lover’s fever dream. It’s like someone crammed a Mensa test into a haunted house and added robot arms. You’re solving logic grids,...

Snoopy and Peanuts is a 1990 DOS game inspired by Charles M. Schulz's beloved comic-strip characters, bringing Snoopy, Charlie Brown, and friends into a lighthearted computer adven...

Follow the Reader (1992, DOS) is an educational oddity that feels like a kindly librarian discovered the power of DOS and decided to make literacy a competitive sport. You guide wo...

Project: Space Station is a 1987 simulation game that challenges players to design, manage, and operate a futuristic space station. Players must handle construction, resources, and...

In Atomino (1991), you’re not blowing things up — you’re building atoms. That’s right: this puzzle game puts you in charge of creating molecular structures ...

Creatures Village trades explosions for adorable AI pets in a colorful sandbox world. You raise, teach, and care for Norns—genetically simulated cuties with personalities as ...

Environmental doom simulator? Check. Grim statistics? Double check. Balance of the Planet lets you tinker with carbon emissions, wildlife extinction, and deforestation until you ei...

The Island of Dr. Brain combines adventure-game exploration with a generous collection of educational puzzles, all wrapped in a colorful setting inspired by the classic mad-scienti...

1893: A World's Fair Mystery is an interactive fiction game developed by the American studio Illuminated Lantern and released in 2002. Set during the Chicago World's Columbian Expo...

Car Builder is less about speed and more about spreadsheets—just with axles. In this 1982 gem, you don’t race cars, you design them. From gear ratios to weight distribu...

PC Globe 5 is an educational geography and reference program designed to turn a DOS computer into a compact digital atlas. It provides information about countries, geography, popul...

Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego? turns American geography into a detective game, sending you from state to state while tracking down Carmen and her gang. Each investigation dep...

Moon Calculator is a compact DOS utility devoted to lunar calculations, offering users a way to explore information about the Moon through the humble personal computer. Programs li...

Math was never supposed to be this exciting. In Number Munchers, you’re a green blob with an appetite for multiplication tables, gobbling up correct answers while dodging &ld...

Super Solvers: OutNumbered! takes arithmetic and turns it into a frantic chase against villains, proving that mathematics becomes considerably more interesting when somebody is try...

Galleons of Glory invites players to sail the high seas in search of fame, fortune, and possibly a few cannonballs heading directly toward their ship. Naval combat games from this ...

Super Solvers: Operation Neptune is an educational adventure that combines underwater exploration with lessons disguised as missions. Players take part in a submarine-themed journe...

Spiritual Warfare is a 1993 action-adventure that replaces the usual fantasy arsenal with something considerably more unusual: biblical themes and religious symbolism. The player t...

Move aside, Jurassic Park—Dinopark Tycoon (1993, DOS) gave kids everywhere the chance to run their very own dinosaur zoo without the risk of being eaten alive. This education...

ASCII art has never been so morbid. Classic Hangman is exactly what it says on the tin: guess the word or watch your little stick figure meet a tragic end. Letters become lifelines...