A Long Game Project toolStrategic thinking using games
A course that uses games as the curriculum for thinking skills.
Your kid rushes everything, and makes the same mistake twice. Your students leave a lesson without picking up the skill it was meant to build. Your team had a strong offsite, then went back to old habits inside a fortnight.
You already know what skill you want to practise. What you do not have is a thing to do on Sunday afternoon, on Tuesday after lunch, or in week one of the next quarter.
This page is that thing. Twelve sessions. Six modules. One game a week. Three Bonus Modules for going deeper. A free option on every session, so cost does not stop anyone.
Skills are practised, not lectured. The same way a piano scale is. Pick a game, run it as a session, do the debrief. Then pick the next one.
"I want them to learn to plan, not just react. What do we play on Sundays?"
"Critical thinking is in my syllabus. Show me a Tuesday afternoon where they practise it."
"One offsite is a memory. I need a four-month arc the team can feel."
Illustrative personas. These are not quotes from real people.
The whole landscape, on one page
Strategic thinking is not one skill. The map below shows every category, every sub-category, and every individual skill we score games against. Coloured chips are the skills the course covers. Faded chips are still in the database. They are available for other paths.
Skill, task, mechanic, game
Every skill has a cognitive task behind it. The task is the move your brain has to make to use the skill. Game mechanics are how we get the brain to make that move again and again, in low-stakes conditions, with feedback. Pick a skill on the left to see the chain.
Specific skill
Practice chain
What a single session looks like
One game, played once, is a game night. A session brackets the play with setup, observation, and reflection. The five phase boxes below are the same shape our lesson generator produces. Gameplay is the loud part. Reflection is where players say what they noticed.
Gameplay is the loud part. Reflection is about a tenth of the session. Do not skip it.
The curriculum
The arc moves from seeing, to planning, to relating, to resourcing, to executing, to adapting. That is the same order a strategic move actually unfolds in. Each module is two weeks. Each week is one focus skill, one suggested game, and one free or open-source alternative.
Strategic Thinking · A 12-week course
Six modules. One skill per week. Free option on every session.
Bonus Modules
Three Bonus Modules extend the 12-week core sideways. Each is four sessions. Each session names a focus skill and lists two or three nearby skills it also exercises.
What to do on Monday
Pick one skill, not five.
Open the diagnostic. Find the sub-category you score weakest in. Start with the module that covers it. Trying to practise the whole landscape at once is how you practise none of it.
Always do the debrief.
The play is the practice. Five minutes of "What did you try? What did you change your mind about?" gets players to say out loud what they assumed. Skip it and the session was just a game night.
Repeat before you progress.
Run the same session twice with the same group before moving on. Do not optimise for variety. Optimise for the move you can make twice.
The Shortlist diagnostic gives you a starting point in five to ten minutes. The skill builder lets you pick what you want to practise and shows you the games that let you practise it. Strategic thinking is a skill. Do not outsource it. Practise it.
Download the course
Pop in your email and we will send you a printable copy of all twelve sessions, with the games, the lesson scaffold, and the debrief prompts. Free, no spam, unsubscribe in one click.
Want the lesson packs to go with it?
The Shortcourse Companion bundle gives you printable lesson packs for every skill and mechanic the course points at, scaffolded for upper-primary, lower-secondary, and upper-secondary classrooms. 60+ PDFs, plus the rendered course PDF.
See the Companion bundle