From my childhood, two come to mind:
Carmen SanDiego games. I learned what spelunking was and some random facts about countries/states/history.
Amazon Trail. The player went on a research trip up the Amazon river. https://classicgames.gg/play/play-the-amazon-trail-online/
Slightly more recently: Typing of the Dead. This one probably leans much more towards a game with a gimmick, but touch typing was a good skill to have.
I remember spending hours and hours trying to take photos of animals in Amazon Trail! I’m not even sure I remember the rest of the game, other than maybe fishing
Amazon Trail was a delight. Except when I invariably took the wrong paths and had to go back aways…whhopsies.
Math Blaster (1987 one)
Spent soo many hours getting good with the jetpack
They’re not explicitly edutainment, but the Civilization games have a ton of historical tidbits that are just for general interest, rather than being part of the game.
I had a game growing up called The Way Things Work, which kept my attention for quite a while. Then I became an engineer, so maybe it’s just me.
It wasn’t advertised to me as an educational game, but “Dave the Diver” enriched my understanding and curiosity for various aquatic organisms! I find myself recognizing things I learned about in the game elsewhere often, to my delight.
Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego…. At least nerdy kid me loved it. That may explain some things.
Some of the 90s era educational games were pretty cool:
- The Dr. Brain series
- Logic Quest 3D - An edutainment FPS set in a medieval world with logic programming and voice acting. The controls were terrible.
- Stowawy! - Very minimal gameplay, but a great experience. I would kill for a 4K remaster.
Pharaoh/Cleopatra had lots of relatively in-depth explanatory text about life in ancient Egypt, but I don’t know if it qualifies as an educational game.
There is an old dos series called Gismos and Gadgets
Oh, what a great game! Most of the Learning Company games were legitimately both fun and educational. Gizmos and Gadgets was definitely my favorite, but Outnumbered was also good. And there was one with a snowy mountain where you solved math problems, but I don’t know the name of it.
I can’t remember if it was the same company, but there was also a cool one called Logical Journey of the Zoombinis, which had lots of fun logic and problem-solving puzzles
Zoombinis is also amazing. Need to go back and finish it.
Treasure Mathstorm! That, Treasure Mountain, and Midnight Rescue were favourites in our household when I was a kid.
When I started playing computer games, most of them were just text adventures and I had to read the text and understand it, and use context clues to solve puzzles.
A pirate has stolen all of your gold and run into the cave!
-chase pirate
There is no pirate here
-follow pirate
There is no pirate here
-run into cave
I don’t understand that command
-go in cave
I don’t understand that command
-walk to cave
I don’t understand that command
-enter cave
I don’t understand that command
turns off game
You reach a fork in the road. There’s are pathways leading: North East West
-go north
I don’t know what north is
Throws keyboard
Where in the World is Carmen San Diego was pretty big when I was a kid. It was pretty good at teaching you geography.
Number munchers.
Oregon Trail.
Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?.
The incredible machine!
Yes, actually. The answer that comes to mind is Gilbert and the Chemystical Island - a game I spent a lot of hours with as a kid together with my parents. It’s basically a Myst-like point-and-click adventure game with the usual trappings of “combine items and drag them onto problems on screen to solve”, but where every problem has a solution rooted in science and chemistry intended to be a teaching aid.
I had a great time as a kid making batteries out of lemons and nails and learning about paper being made from trees and many more little discoveries.
When I was a kid, I used to play a lot of educational games. I had the various JumpStarts and was a big fan of Zoombinis. I learned a lot about ancient Rome from the Caesar series too.
As an adult, the Paradox 4X games (Crusader Kings, Victoria, Europa Universalis) can actually teach you a lot about history and geography. I mostly play the older ones because the newer ones have atrocious development cycles and DLC policies. Victoria 2 is my favorite!
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Well… Civilization contains a ton of history in the descriptions of things like world wonders etc, which was educational for me at the time I started out with that series. Likewise, games like Age of Empires 4 campaign modes tend to follow real historic battle scenarios, and contain a good bit of history in them.
