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Ask HN: Any good examples of learning through games/puzzles, for adults?
Puzzles, games etc with the intention of teaching of some concept or topic. In any format (board games, digital games etc).
Any examples?
- iBelieve 8y agoNot really a full "game", but I found this picture-based Morse code trainer from Experiments with Google a fun and easy way to learn Morse code: https://morse.withgoogle.com/learn/ https://morse.withgoogle.com/learn/ http://nandgame.com http://nandgame.com was posted on HN recently and I found it to be fun and educational: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17508151 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17508151
- akavel 8y agoI once had an idea to make a Morse code learning game, where the message would be emitted by a distant warship in a storm emitting flashes of light in your direction :) to add some emotion to the task :) but never really tried to execute on it yet.
- abecedarius 8y agohttp://www.zachtronics.com/kohctpyktop-engineer-of-the-people/ http://www.zachtronics.com/kohctpyktop-engineer-of-the-peopl... is moderately idealized CMOS logic design.
- rkalfane 8y agoThere's https://vim-adventures.com/ https://vim-adventures.com/ although I never really enjoyed it, it was a fun game for the first 15minutes.
- doctoboggan 8y agoI opened this page to recommend vim-adventures. A few years ago I tried to get into vim off and on for over a year. I played this game for a few hours and all of a sudden I had the muscle memory needed to navigate vim. I've been a happy vim user for years now. I can't explain it, but there is something about games that really reinforce this kind of learning.
- Noumenon72 8y agoI enjoyed it a lot in level 1, great game design I learned things that I wouldn't have sat down to learn. How many levels do you get before you have to pay $25?
- S4M4R4T1N 8y agoI also opened this thread to recommend Vim Adventures. I tried teaching myself vim with standard walkthroughs but it was too difficult to remember all of the different key combinations. Vim Adventures was so effective because it only lets you use the keys that it teaches you, and slowly expands the key set over time. Well worth the $25 if you want a guided introduction.
- whitepoplar 8y agoMazes for Programmers https://www.amazon.com/Mazes-Programmers-Twisty-Little-Passages/dp/1680500554 https://www.amazon.com/Mazes-Programmers-Twisty-Little-Passa...
- everyone 8y agoSo all Zachtronics games. Also Kerbal space program. Fantastic game, you'll learn about celestial mechanics, the basics of designing rockets (and if you keep playing, stuff like the Oberth effect and how to do a nice interplanetary Hohmann transfer )
- guusmaan 8y agohttps://ncase.me https://ncase.me Nicky Case has a knack for explaining complex systems in simple ways through games
- jkeat 8y agoI think about the network theory one almost every day, can't recommend it highly enough: https://ncase.me/crowds/ https://ncase.me/crowds/
- citation_please 8y agoWow! That was amazing. I'd love to see that applied to Reddit / Subreddit / User networks.
- jccalhoun 8y agoVery interesting. I had never heard of him before and found them very interesting.
- branchless 8y agoThis looks great. Want to play it now but the edges of the screen are missing on Android Firefox.
- juanuys 8y agoNicky is also involved in this: https://explorabl.es https://explorabl.es
- megaman22 8y agoWanna learn history? Pick up some of the Paradox grand strategy games; Europa Universalis, Victoria, Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings. A side effect is that you'll pick up a lot of geography by osmosis, which is in my experience, the easiest way to learn that subject - you're looking at maps and borders and terrain features constantly. Wargaming is in general a good way to pick up information on historical topics. Most developers that are in that niche put a lot of effort into doing the research, and there is typically a lot of information baked into the in-game documentation at your fingertips, not to mention being a springboard for Wikipedia safaris.
- Splines 8y ago> A side effect is that you'll pick up a lot of geography by osmosis, which is in my experience, the easiest way to learn that subject - you're looking at maps and borders and terrain features constantly. My son loves Crusader Kings 2 (and EU3), and had such an easy time in his history class because of this. He knew the geography of Europe down cold. He's currently digging into Hearts of Iron IV. To be honest these grand strategy games aren't really my thing but I should give them a shot. Their systems just seem overwhelming to a new player.
- cryoshon 8y agodefinitely agree here. i think i know a tremendous amount about ww2 history since it's a hobby of mine, but wouldn't ya know, through playing hearts of iron 4 i've learned a tremendous amount more about the era and by extension how it shaped the world afterward. you're also 100% correct regarding geography. it's hard to get a real feeling for exactly how huge asia is until you're having difficulty getting supply to your front line deep in northwestern china. not to mention that i have a pretty good feeling for where all of the tiny pacific islands are now (attu island, i'm looking at you).
- JenBarb 8y agoI like Duolingo for language learning: https://www.duolingo.com/ https://www.duolingo.com/ I don't think its enough to actually learn language on its own, so it's best used mixed with a more formal method of language learning. It's fun and addictive enough that I actually keep using it, so that makes it good to me.
- kaycebasques 8y agoCheck out their new Stories program if you haven’t yet. I've found it to be a refreshing change of pace, compared to the typical lessons. As the name implies, you're presented a story, and after each sentence, they quiz you on the meaning of the sentence that you just encountered. https://stories.duolingo.com https://stories.duolingo.com
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoI've been doing Duo (French) for a couple of months, but a I'm not sure I've learnt anything, it just feels like I've reinforced past learning. I started Chinese, and it just seems so much of a mish-mash - it's like they just randomise testing and eventually you glean enough from the test questions to answer. With French the closest I've come to learning, that I can point to, is from users answers to comments from other user. And the good and bad are mixed, there's no clarity.
- jmcgough 8y agoDuo taught me japanese characters, but I had a hard time really improving my french grammar from it. There's no substitution for in-person conversation.
- t3h2mas 8y agoA radio ad for the second season of the Duolingo podcast prompted me to check out the first season. I appreciate the idea that the episodes are life stories instead of fake cafe scenes. The stories are interesting, and sometimes intense. The CEO / cofounder talks about a kidnapping in his family in the last episode of season one. The small english summaries every few sentences helps provide context. That helps with context for the words I'm not familiar or strong with. The language used is intermediate level. Personally I am below that level, but have gotten value from episodes.
- malditojavi 8y agobrilliant.org
- Aardwolf 8y agoThose show up with a minute of sponsored distraction inside SO MANY youtube videos (any video about math or puzzles from the last year) that I started to dislike instead of like them An example of too much advertising having adverse effect, at least on me :p
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoDo you have udemy telling you Python is a powerful programming language before every YouTube video as well?
- edanm 8y agoBrilliant is definitely more prevalent in the kinds of videos that I tend to watch.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- nomoi 8y agopythonchallenge.com
- frankensteins 8y agoThis is a good one. I was going to post it. It's good that I checked before I duplicate the same content.
- wamberg 8y agoI can't emphasize this site enough. The Python Challenge has a special place in my heart. I was a bored C# .NET developer. In my downtime I would poke at a challenge. I learned Python through this site; picking up the standard library as the challenges progressed. From my experience with this site I was able to land a Python webdev position. pythonchallenge.com changed the course of my career and I'm grateful for it.
- roasm 8y agoWe created Word Genius for iOS and Android: https://curious.com/wordgenius https://curious.com/wordgenius It teaches facts about all kinds of subjects hidden in a crossword-like game. Free to play, with IAP hints. 4.7 rating.
- FranklinChen 8y agoThe Incredible Proof Machine for learning various logics: http://incredible.pm/ http://incredible.pm/
- hardwaresofton 8y agoI found flexboxfroggy (http://flexboxfroggy.com http://flexboxfroggy.com) to be an excellent resource for learning flexbox when I came across it. Just enough gamification, and enough straight concepts to allow me to build confidence quickly and make it a bit easier to remember the knobs flexbox offers.
- superdeeda 8y agoI used to tutor at a coding class for high school kids and I never saw them more engaged than they had been with flexbogfroggy!
- ashton314 8y agohttps://exercism.io https://exercism.io Learn virtually any programming language by completing series of puzzles. Tests are all written for you. They just made a huge overhaul of their UX, and it’s really nice looking. I’m using it to try to learn Rust and Elixir at the moment.
- NeonVice 8y agoExercism is a great resource. Their tests are thorough and reading other users' code submissions has helped me immensely. Their new look is a lot less devilish. :)
- froindt 8y agoCircuit scramble is a fun game on Android for learning and visualizing logic circuits. It's not directly relevant to anything I do, but I enjoyed playing through it. Factorio does a decent job teaching the intuition behind running a factory.
- 13years 8y agoI have collected a few here. Mostly around topics of programming. https://github.com/dakaraphi/development-resources/blob/master/README.md#game-based-learning https://github.com/dakaraphi/development-resources/blob/mast...
- durkie 8y agohttp://lyricstraining.com http://lyricstraining.com does language teaching by having you watch/listen to music videos in that language on youtube and filling in the lyrics. Super fun!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- pixelperfect 8y agoLeetCode
- dougk16 8y agoTry any popular RPG, or otherwise dialog-heavy game with quests and instructions and such, but switch the language package. For example I did this with the Diablo games to help me learn Polish. A cool part is you pick up a lot of archaic vocabulary that your average native speaker doesn't even know. :)
- f00_ 8y agoI did this while i was actively trying to learn korean, playing Maplestory 2 and League of Legends on the kr servers Minorly successful, fun atleast. I'd suggest it
- triviatise 8y agoin the 70s on the PLATO system (predates the internet) there was a game called bugs and drugs. It was a graphical dungeon in orange/black 512x512 where you used medicines to attack diseases. Medical students used it to learn pharmacology. The PLATO network functionality predates much of the internet. <<PLATO's most popular game, is one of the world's first MUDs and has over 1 million hours of use.[citation needed]. The games Doom and Quake can trace part of their lineage back to PLATO programmer Silas Warner.>>
- conistonwater 8y agoRaymond Smullyan's books can teach a fair bit about logic, up to about Godel's theorems and the halting problem (I remember To Mock a Mockingbird fondly), through carefully written sequences of puzzles that lead up to proofs of them. If you try to go through his books encoding the puzzles and their solutions in Coq, then you'll learn quite a lot about Coq and constructive mathematics also.
- edanm 8y agoAn interesting idea! I've long wanted to go through more of his books, and I've also long wanted to learn Coq, so that sounds like an interesting combination. Have you found it worthwhile to learn Coq?
- conistonwater 8y agoI learnt it mostly for the sake of learning something new, I didn't really think at the time whether it would be worthwhile. It's a very specific tool developed by people in very specific fields of CS (type theory, compiler verification, but I could be wrong about this), so I just never felt bad about not having a use for it myself. Encoding (a subset of) the puzzles as SAT problems for something like z3 would be an alternative to Coq.
- atesti 8y agoPlay The Witness (the-witness.net). The game is full of puzzles which each teach you a different concept. It's a great experience to play this game. Avoid spoilers!
- falsedan 8y agoYou don't learn any transferable skills tho, all you do is get better at solving The Witness puzzles.
- baby 8y agoHonestly the kid section of bookstores is amazing to me. There are so many hyper pedagogical book/games/labs to learn about anything. I don't know why we don't shop there as adult
- funkjunky 8y agoHttps://yousician.com teaches you play musical instruments via a guitar-hero like game interface. Also supports your own/community content
- blablablerg 8y agowww.nandgame.com it was a couple of days ago on HN, really loved it and learned something from it.
- wodenokoto 8y agoI played Khan Academys "World of Math"-missions as if it was a game. It really helped with my mental arithmetic and memorizing middle school equations, for which I did understand the concept, but could never remember. https://www.khanacademy.org/mission/math https://www.khanacademy.org/mission/math (need login)
- baby 8y agoTo learn Chinese get wordswing. It's an interactive gamebook where you can hover words you don't know. It's amazing.
- wibr 8y agoI learned a lot about aviation as a kid/teenager playing the Microsoft Flight Simulator. All the important instruments, flight control, radio navigation, flight patterns etc. Good times on Meigs Field.
- hemmert 8y agoEscape Team is great for learning about team collaboration: https://www.escape-team.com https://www.escape-team.com It's a printable, app-supported escape game. There's also a mission editor for creating custom missions.
- 10-6 8y agoCoding/Math: https://coderbyte.com https://coderbyte.com https://hackerrank.com https://hackerrank.com https://leetcode.com https://leetcode.com https://codeforces.com https://codeforces.com https://projecteuler.net https://projecteuler.net (more mathy) https://www.topcoder.com/challenges https://www.topcoder.com/challenges https://adventofcode.com https://adventofcode.com https://halite.io https://halite.io (machine learning + game) https://www.enki.com https://www.enki.com (coding challenges on mobile)
- Kagerjay 8y agohalite.io reminds me of screeps on steam
- 10-6 8y agoAh yeah I forgot to mention screeps which is awesome!
- 10-6 8y agoSome more I actually should have mentioned: https://flexboxfroggy.com https://flexboxfroggy.com (CSS) https://www.datacamp.com https://www.datacamp.com (data science challenges) https://www.codingame.com/start https://www.codingame.com/start (learn to code via fun games) https://screeps.com https://screeps.com (cool MMO AI game w/ JS coding)
- 0xcafecafe 8y agoGreat list, thank you
- viraptor 8y agoAlso http://rosalind.info/ http://rosalind.info/
- appleiigs 8y agoAre there any on the list here that are best for learning algorithms in a manner similar to a course curriculum and has explanations? I'm asking from a self-taught web dev (django) perspective where I have holes in my knowledge. Some algo books I have so far seem too mathy. While not afraid of math, I understand it better when coding them out myself. I wish projecteuler would provide more hints/explanations. Adventofcode problems are fun but are random (not like a curriculum). Other websites are competitive programming focused which I'm not sure is comp-sci enough (correct me if I'm wrong).
- Angostura 8y agoI think the Swift Playgrounds are an excellent way for an adult to get a feel for coding on iPad.
- octygen 8y agoLeadership and decision-making through Banner Saga. How to be social through New York Nights and Miami Nights (mobile games). Anthropology/History through Civ... Obviously :)
- positivejam 8y agohttp://www.flexboxdefense.com/ http://www.flexboxdefense.com/ Really appreciated this back when I was first introduced to CSS Flexbox.
- mikro 8y agoIn terms of learning hacking, there are CTF/wargames that teach through puzzles. Gracker: https://www.smrrd.de/creating-a-hacking-game-part-1-introduction.html https://www.smrrd.de/creating-a-hacking-game-part-1-introduc... Overthewire: http://overthewire.org/wargames/ http://overthewire.org/wargames/ Exploit Exercises: https://exploit-exercises.com/ https://exploit-exercises.com/ PicoCTF: https://picoctf.com/ https://picoctf.com/ P.S. I would love to work on making educational puzzles. If anyone is similarly passionate about it, please message me.
- Tcepsa 8y agoI liked Human Resource Machine for brushing up on Assembly language concepts Microcorruption is a fun resource for learning about reverse engineering, assembly language, and cybersecurity (the concept is that you're going through the assembly code of dev kits of different versions of software-controlled locks to find vulnerabilities that can then be exploited to get into warehouses full of MacGuffins). I've gotten through about half of the stages so far--they get really tough, but it is extremely satisfying to successfully complete one! I also really enjoyed the couple of Zachtronics games I've played (I've done the first 5 stages or so of Konstructor: Engineer of the People and I managed to get through all the main modules in TIS-100) Lightbot is a cute app for initial programming concepts through puzzles (program a robot to walk around a grid and light up various squares)
- corv 8y agoSeconded, Human Resource Machine and Zachtronics in general!
- jcl 8y agoAlong the same lines, Silicon Zeroes covers a lot of low-level computer science and hardware engineering concepts. I wouldn't be surprised if some enterprising instructor has used it for labs. https://store.steampowered.com/app/684270/Silicon_Zeroes/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/684270/Silicon_Zeroes/
- falsedan 8y agoCar Mechanic Simulator 2015 taught me the names of the various car bits and that clients never change (something is wrong, pls fix it by checking every possible part)
- duiker101 8y agoI have been using the wonderful seterra.com to improve my geography, it's the first decent geography quiz that I've seen that has a lot of nice categories
- durpleDrank 8y agoWhen I would meet non English speakers they always told me they learned English by playing FINAL FANTASY on super nintendo. One day, after several attempts at learning another language it dawned on me "Why don't I play Final Fantasy in -INSERT LANGUAGE YOU WANT TO LEARN HERE". It works like a charm and you'll find the "translation barrier" will be removed very quickly.
- mrhappyunhappy 8y agoCan you explain further, why final fantasy?
- jplayer01 8y agoThe language is fairly simple, you have compelling plot and characters to drive interest. Why not?
- starpilot 8y agoWorks with learning a language through enjoying other media as well. Read Harry Potter or other popular books in another language, watch movies dubbed in that language and so on. Some day (today?) even machine-translated stuff will be good enough to learn from.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoI play too much CSGO and was hoping to leverage that to find a group of French players, but I've not really managed yet, still only learning to swear in Russian ... another suggestion is to watch a favourite program on Netflix in your target language. Most adult stuff is too fast/complex for me as yet though, so I'm looking for a kids show (Hello Duggy in French would be super).
- crtasm 8y agoHave you seen Muzzy? Animated story intercut with more standard (but still fun) language learning segments. Idea is that you watch the whole thing in one language and then in another. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzzy_in_Gondoland https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzzy_in_Gondoland
- bminor13 8y agoFactorio is one of the most stimulating games I've ever played. It forces one to think about not only layout/design of a system but also the project management aspects - which parts to build when, when to take on "technical debt" by building a temporary "good enough" version, etc. ...this is if you don't look up hints/other people's designs, of course.
- clemesha 8y agoA game of connecting different topics on Wikipedia: https://thewikigame.com https://thewikigame.com The public game room has lots of general random topics, or you can create a private group and make your own challenges with any topics you like. This is a personal/passion project of mine (and has gotten fairly popular these days). I'm actively working on improving the game, by adding category specific games, different game modes, etc.
- pandler 8y agoI was playing Flexbox Zombies for a little while and really enjoyed it. > This is a Mastery Game. Each section unravels part of the plot, gives you mastery over a new flexbox concept, and presents zombie survival challenges that force you to solidify your new skills like your life depends on it. https://flexboxzombies.com https://flexboxzombies.com [free] He also has a new one called "Grid Critters", which I'm unfamiliar with but it looks like it's a similar thing but space themed and for CSS Grid instead of Flexbox. https://www.gridcritters.com https://www.gridcritters.com [paid] His blog is also really awesome too: http://gedd.ski/ http://gedd.ski/
- pininja 8y agoFactorio is a fantastic game for learning systems engineering, and thinking in abstractions. It’s a crafting game similar to Minecraft, and a building game like roller coaster tycoon (but factories instead of theme parks). It’s also very very fun! This game challenges the player to create more and more complex automated systems. If you liked Technic Mods for Minecraft, you’ll love Factorio. https://factorio.com/ https://factorio.com/
- 52-6F-62 8y agoOh god I've sunk some time into that game! Definitely recommend it, but set a timer!
- ball_of_lint 8y agoSeconded. Factorio is the sort of game you can lose a few days to without realizing. Very fun, but also very consuming.
- cwkoss 8y agoDon't try this game on an evening before you need to wake up early. Wonderful game, extremely engrossing: everything you do is a choice between long-term utility and time until implementation - Do you make something that will do what you need for the next five minutes in 1 min of building or something that will do what you what you need for days with a 20 mins of building? Everything is a good choice, but some choices speed up your growth faster than others. I've had many nights where I've gotten sucked in and played for hours before realizing how late it is. Games with exponential growth curves that are able to still achieve balance create such an exhilarating feeling of progress.
- techbio 8y agoWith a slightly different approach to the question: I've learned a lot from coding board/puzzle games into playable programs/solvers: Boggle, Scrabble, Kakuro, etc.
- krallja 8y agoZachtronics and Kerbal were already mentioned, but I accidentally learned to recognize several types of plants from playing Skyrim. We visited the Red Rock Canyon in Nevada at about the same time as I had reached mid game in Skyrim. I saw a shrub and immediately knew it was a juniper. I don’t think I’d ever seen a real one in my life before that.
- soniman 8y agoIntroduction to Probability with Texas Hold'em Examples Not a game but a book about a game, but learning the game helps you learn probability, permutations and combinations.
- a-martyn 8y agoSteve Reich’s Clapping Music aims to teach people how to perform a piece of contemporary music from the ground up: http://clappingmusicapp.com/ http://clappingmusicapp.com/ [full disclosure] I developed this. We collaborated with London Sinfonietta Orchestra to get the pedagogy right. We aimed to make a game that is both engaging and addictive, whilst also teaching real musical skill (in contrast to say Guitar Hero :o). The pedagogy and game mechanics did clash into each other during development, we did a lot of user testing to find a balance. Raph Koster's Theory of Fun for Game Design was invaluable, as were lectures and posts by Daniel Cook. It's a hard game, especially for people with no musical background, but nonetheless we had strong engagement. Players who topped the leaderboard after a few months were invited to perform at a live event. They were pretty good, but then I didn't see them perform before they played the game.
- sbilstein 8y agoThat's incredible that you got to work on something with Steve Reich. I saw him recently at the SF Symphony and he performed some clapping music pieces alongside Michael Tilson Thomas. Steve Reich is a legend for sure!
- Raph_Koster 8y agoI'm tickled that my book was helpful!
- xcubic 8y agoIs there any chance for an android version?
- jedimastert 8y agoRight? Or even an online version where you tap the space bar or something
- xcubic 8y agoGood idea too!
- 8y ago
- someearth 8y agoIn the past, there was http://robocode.sourceforge.net/ http://robocode.sourceforge.net/ for Java.
- jonbaer 8y agoBloxels ... http://home.bloxelsbuilder.com/ http://home.bloxelsbuilder.com/ And if you are into geopolitics, history, wargaming, classical, etc, 0AD ... https://play0ad.com https://play0ad.com
- malloreon 8y agoAlmost any game by Zachtronics. In particular: Opus Magnum Shenzhen I/O TIS-100 SpaceChem
- 100times 8y agoMeqanic: http://meqanic.com http://meqanic.com Game that attempts to teach intuition about quantum mechanics and particularly quantum computer circuits.
- gotmayonase 8y agoOur company has recently released a boating safety course done through an interactive story. Might be the kind of thing you're looking for: https://www.ilearntoboat.com/washington/ https://www.ilearntoboat.com/washington/
- louismerlin 8y ago"Get started making music" by Ableton is really good ! https://learningmusic.ableton.com https://learningmusic.ableton.com
- ddurdik 8y agoTwo of my favorites: 1. Monopoly, with no "house rules" - play it exactly as written in the game manual. Monopoly was created as a teaching tool about the outcomes of unregulated capitalism, and it is a very, very good teacher. At some point, one or two players will accrue enough wealth to become the clear winners, and all the other players will start a slow spiral into poverty. Over the years people have added "house rules" in an attempt to make the game more friendly and fun, which is completely missing the point. It's not intended to be friendly or fun, it's intended to educate! 2. The Parable of the Polygons: https://ncase.me/polygons/ https://ncase.me/polygons/. Arguably not much of a game or a puzzle, but its use of interactive game-ish mechanics makes the story much more impactful.
- JunaidBhai 8y agoWe at http://draftss.com http://draftss.com has part of a process where we test designers through a game in which we provide a finished design. Then we change the brief's key element, Eg. premium, fun, serious, friendly, affordable, complex. This game helps us in learning and teaching the principles of visual design. It's currently used internally, but we are planning to launch it for public and making the whole thing open source.
- lmx 8y agohttps://blitztactics.com https://blitztactics.com Fast-paced chess puzzles for teaching chess tactics through pattern recognition
- mattgibson 8y agoThe board game Monopoly was originally based on the Landlord's Game by Elizabeth Magie, which was intended to show how property ownership ruins free market capitalism. Land can't be created or moved, so is not a free market (according to Adam Smith). People are forced to pay extortionate rents and have no way to escape. Not widely known at the time or now, so perhaps not a very successful example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_(game)#Early_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_(game)#Early_history
- dpkrjb 8y agoI know a lot of other comments are for learning life skills but if you ever wanted to learn Vim in a fun way! https://vim-adventures.com https://vim-adventures.com
- snovv_crash 8y agohttp://robocode.sf.net http://robocode.sf.net / http://robowiki.net http://robowiki.net Released by IBM in 2001 and still going strong. Learn about geometry, trig, stats, ML, control theory, game theory and more to control robots in a 2D tank-style game.
- merlincorey 8y agoTry Elevator Saga[1] for an in-browser javascript programming game that will learn you some things about distributed queues, potentially. [1] https://play.elevatorsaga.com/ https://play.elevatorsaga.com/
- mrzl 8y agohttp://isotope.ch http://isotope.ch Not about CS, but about chemistry. And in French.
- ballenf 8y agohttps://david-peter.de/cube-composer/ https://david-peter.de/cube-composer/ Functional programming concepts in a visual presentation.
- bastichelaar 8y agoLearn DevOps, Cloud and automation by solving challenges: https://instruqt.com https://instruqt.com
- viraptor 8y agoThere's Euclidea mobile app (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hil_hk.euclidea https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hil_hk.euc...) which starts with basic geometric constructions and then really pushes for new approaches.
- hondish 8y agoConversa is a conversational and ideation tool using board game dynamics that we've developed: http://lifeandeverything.net/ http://lifeandeverything.net/ By scaffolding good conversations, it helps a group learn _from each other_ as well as _how to converse_. Through our trials, I've been delighted to see how well it works with families. I've learnt much about my children's thinking and feelings. A bit more info: We believe two things are needed to bring together differing groups into fruitful dialogue. Firstly, a set of clear, explicit, and strict rules that everyone submits to (regardless of existing power structures). Secondly, a relaxed, playful and fun context. These two seem in tension, and yet we integrate them all the time - with games. Conversa is a tabletop game that helps a group talk about the big things in life in a way that's real, safe, and fun. It's an ideation and conversational scaffold that uses game dynamics to create the right amount of structure to let conversations flourish. It was designed by award-winning game designer, Tim Roediger, from an original concept by Martin Olmos. Conversa is the anti-Facebook experience. Players meet in person, facing each other rather than their screens. They share an intimate time where it's 'just us', with no wider audience watching or judging. They respond to a prompt creatively, from a limited set of image cards. They get to see each other smile, hear each other chuckle, while tasting a shared drink. Each gets a turn without being shouted down, although no one has to say more than they want to. It's a real game, with a score and a winner. But there's a twist - the points go to the player who opens opportunities for others to speak up. Rather than insults, the outcome is conversation that builds relationships with listening, learning, and laughing. We've trialled it in organisational contexts and with children as young as eight. We're looking at applications in design, team ideation, project reviews, risk assessment, and more. Below are two examples: Project Management: http://blog.lifeandeverything.net/post/147037633043/gaming-for-project-managers http://blog.lifeandeverything.net/post/147037633043/gaming-f... Focus Groups: http://blog.lifeandeverything.net/post/147037631598/gaming-for-focus-groups http://blog.lifeandeverything.net/post/147037631598/gaming-f... We are exploring paths to market. We are also exploring ways for larger groups (50-200) to use the game (e.g. company conferences, strategy development). Disclosure: I'm in the two-person design team.
- drhodes 8y agoHere's two. One to learn hexadecimal http://flippybitandtheattackofthehexadecimalsfrombase16.com/ http://flippybitandtheattackofthehexadecimalsfrombase16.com/ hair-nah, to teach people not to touch black women's hair. http://hairnah.com/ http://hairnah.com/
- jcl 8y agoHere's a neat puzzle game that got posted several months ago, on the quantum mechanics of photons: http://play.quantumgame.io/ http://play.quantumgame.io/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15905924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15905924
- mimagic 8y agohttps://zty.pe/ https://zty.pe/ A very addictive game if you want to improve your typing.
- earenndil 8y agoRobot odyssey (google for binaries and play in dosbox). Intended for kids, but definitely age-appropriate for adults, and hard as nails.
- 1011_1101 8y agoPortal + Portal 2 115 comments without any mention, is this too obvious?
- harry8 8y agoI loved these games. I can't remember learning from them. What have I forgotten?
- 1011_1101 8y agoBasic physic concepts, like gravity, friction, velocity or optics. If you were already familar with these concepts then training/experimenting would be a better description than learning. Afaik there were even schools using this game in classes.
- ajuc 8y agoKerbal Space Program. You will intuitively understand orbital mechanics after a few days playing this game.
- 8bitsrule 8y agoThe Pioneer: Oregon Trail game.
- akavel 8y ago"The Cryptopals Crypto Challenges" (a.k.a. Matasano Crypto Challenge) https://cryptopals.com/ https://cryptopals.com/ "This is a different way to learn about crypto than taking a class or reading a book. We give you problems to solve. They're derived from weaknesses in real-world systems and modern cryptographic constructions. We give you enough info to learn about the underlying crypto concepts yourself. When you're finished, you'll not only have learned a good deal about how cryptosystems are built, but you'll also understand how they're attacked."
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- Bjartr 8y agoI've had a great time with Rocksmith for learning guitar
- away21 8y agohttps://algebra.sympathyforthemachine.com/ https://algebra.sympathyforthemachine.com/ Basic algebra, but from a more proof-oriented perspective.
- cingram 8y agohttps://brilliant.org https://brilliant.org