From typing to coding and playing the guitar: Five more games that teach as you have fun
Flight Simulator.
Tehy nevvr stay ded!!! Sorry, we failed that typing mission. As you may have guessed, Typing of the Dead is a game in which you kill zombies through the power of words. But only when typed correctly on a keyboard. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but it sure doesn’t beat a Logitech keyboard. Typing of the Dead isn’t suitable for younger audiences, but your older teens might find it’s their type.
If you’re stuck between a rock and hard place at home, at least make the rock sound good. Rocksmith is one of gaming’s hidden gems – a video game that teaches you how to play guitar. It comes with around 100 songs and plenty more to download, and is flexible to the learner’s needs, adjusting as required. Turn lockdown into rock-down.
Civilisation was so much better in the old days, before lockdown. Natural disasters were just an excuse to pilfer cotton from your neighbour, negotiate treaties with your enemies, raise taxes to fund a world wonder – all while secretly taking your military into the steel age. Civilisation is a superb way of teaching younger kids how to manager resources, plan ahead, and make difficult decisions, all while taking them on a journey from the stone age to the space age.
We’re all programmed to learn. So why not learn about programming? That’s the point of CodeCombat, which builds coding lessons around an adventure through various landscapes, while your character levels up and gains loot. You can learn CoffeeScript, JavaScript, or Python. The tutorials can be a bit tricky at first and the game requires payment when you progress beyond a certain level, but hey – get with the program – you’re learning something!
Sadly, the only flight we’re getting any time soon is the flight of stairs in our house. Upstairs has carpet, so at least it leads to a soft landing. But when flights do return, we want to able to pilot the darn thing ourselves. Microsoft Flight Simulator is a powerful teaching tool, not just because it shows you how to fly a plane, but because it teaches you the reality of a real job. Nothing to shoot down. No aliens encountered. Just buttons, diligent concentration, and some pretty great views.
Meanwhile, it’s hard to argue that Fall Guys offers educational value. One of last year’s biggest hits, it does require a lot of patience and acceptance, with most players realising that fun is the object of the game and not winning crowns, but otherwise – well, it’s just about falling over a lot.
Knowing full well that mischief is half of the fun, developers Mediatonic introduced Penguin Pursuit in Season 3, which involved carrying penguins around for the longest time possible. The penguins were popular enough that three of them will now start popping up in levels randomly in the season 3.5 update, meaning players can use them for mischief or impromptu fun during a challenge.
Finally, if we’re talking about lessons learned during lockdown, have CD Project Red learned their lesson from the debacle of Cyberpunk 2077? One of the most anticipated games ever, Cyberpunk launched in a buggy and arguably unfinished state on PlayStation 4 and original Xbox One consoles. The developer recently issued a video apology from co-founder Marcin Iwiński, in which a chaste-looking Iwiński said sorry for the mistakes made – while also seeming to blame quality assurance for missing the bugs and problems.
Iwiński also promised that free updates and downloadable content would follow in the months to come, and that the game’s issues would be addressed over 2021. The first of those patches hit during recent days, addressing some of the core bugs and ironing out some crashes.
