A Long Game Project toolGames teach skills.
Find the right one for your next lesson.
Just tell us the curriculum, and we'll give you the shortlist and the lesson plan.
Find activities for your classroomWhy games work.
Active decisions, not passive absorption.
A student playing a strategy game makes a stream of consequential decisions. A student listening to a lecture makes none.
Practice where a mistake costs nothing.
Strategy games ask for risk assessment, systems thinking, resource management, negotiation and planning under uncertainty. Students practise them where a wrong call costs a game, not a grade.
A reason you can show.
Every Shortlist recommendation is linked to specific thinking skills through its mechanics, and the method is published. When someone asks “why are they playing board games in maths class?” you have an answer that isn't “because it's fun.”
Most of these games were never sold as educational.
There are 29,000+ games in our database. Most of them aren't marketed as “educational”. The best games for teaching systems thinking are the ones where the mechanics force the thinking, with or without “STEM” on the box.
We've done the mapping so you don't have to.
Skills you can target
Built for how teachers actually work.
Lesson plans
Each game comes with a lesson plan you can print or copy.
Facilitation notes
How to introduce each game, what to watch for, and how to debrief.
Justification-ready
Every recommendation comes with the skills data you need to explain why this belongs in your classroom.
Find activities for your classroom
Match curriculum skills to board games and generate lesson plans tailored to your year level and classroom setup.
What skills do you want to practise?
Click a subject area to expand it, then select the specific skills you want to focus on.
Want a lesson plan you can actually print?
The Shortlist Store has 44 printable lesson packs - one per board-game mechanic and thinking skill, each scaffolded for upper-primary, lower-secondary, and upper-secondary. Buy singles, three-band combos, or grab the Educator Starter Kit for your year level.