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Videos are a popular choice for visual learning in home and classrooms all over the world. It’s easy to see why. They convey ideas similarly to a teacher delivering a lecture, and they can offer plenty of visual examples to bring ideas home. Students can pause or rewind a video if they’re having trouble following something. Hopefully, since someone went to the trouble of recording them, they’re a little more polished and of better quality than simply recording a lecture.

Well-designed educational video games, while integrating many of the same learning concepts as videos, offers a fundamentally different approach to learning. The many advantages include active engagement rather than passive watching, informative feedback as the player progresses, and best of all, a safe space to fail and try again, which is central to the learning process.

With time at a premium as students, parents, and educators navigate distance learning, it’s more important than ever that time spent on educational programs is time spent learning, and unfortunately, not all educational games are created equal. Some have become notoriously known as “chocolate-covered broccoli,” with game mechanics sprinkled on top of a boring learning activity. Others are well designed from the ground up and these often take a problem-solving or puzzle-driven approach. Here are a few ideas to keep in mind when evaluating educational games to ensure you’re offering students the best learning experiences games have to offer, rather than veggies with some sugar on top.

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