| Category | Rank | Title of Game | Description | Link to Game Website | |
| Corporate / Vocational Skills Games | Gold | Merchants, serious game on negotiation and conflict resolution | An online negotiation course created by Gamelearn, is based on a simulator that recreates six real cases of negotiation in which any employee applies their skills to negotiate, communicate a proposal effectively and resolve conflicts. | Website | |
| Gold | Pizza Xpress | A management game developed by PepsiCo, Inc. and MPS Interactive Systems designed to encourage maintenance team members to plan and execute processes required to run a pizza restaurant. Learners are able to experiment with personnel allocations for meeting pizza demand, in a risk-free virtual restaurant, with the ability to analyze the realistic outcomes of their decisions. | |||
| Gold | Brave to the Sea | An interactive learning experience developed by Expansão – Experiências de Aprendizagem and designed by Marcelo Eira for self-reflection and development of skills and abilities of a team prepared for the era of Digital Transformation: a world full of change, uncertainty and unforeseen events and of exponential information, in which what has been a success yesterday is no guarantee of success tomorrow. | Website | ||
| Silver | Introduction to PetroChemicals | Shell Chemicals contracted MPS Interactive to design and digitize a new face-to-face board game. In this game created by Royal Dutch Shell and MPS Interactive Systems, the learner travels across three areas of a different planet, interacting with the locals, with the game goal to assess feasibility and desirability of setting up a Chemicals business in one of the regions. | |||
| Bronze | Accounting for Empires | Provides students in the CPA Exam Review Course offered by Becker Professional Education with the opportunity compete individually or as a group to correctly answer CPA Exam style questions in order to build their empires (earning homework credit in the course). | Website | ||
| Bronze | Money Experience | Takes a unique approach to financial education. Developed by Jeet Singh, CEO & Founder of Money Experience, and Mike Young, VP of Product and Design, Money Experience emphasizes quality of life and personal priorities. This life simulator and built-in graphic novel helps users gain perspective on how their choices — fiscal and otherwise — affects their futures. | Website | ||
| Bronze | NexAgent by Circadence | An immersive network exploration game, combing education objectives with first-person video game design. This gamified learning platform provides teaches foundational network security skills in an emulated workplace environment. Publisher is Circadence. | Website | ||
| Games for Good / Social Entrepreneurship / Non Profit Games | Silver | The Devil’s Calculator | An educational puzzle game created to increase math appreciation and excitement with real scholastic merit. The game was developed by Christopher Cinq-Mars Jarvis and Cinq-Mars Media. | Website | |
| Silver | Cyberchase: Space Waste Odyssey | An educational, STEM-focused learning game created to increase environmental consciousness and confidence solving math problems in young people. Kevin Di Salvo, WNET/Thirteen, Curios Media, Education and Development Center developed the game to build children’s environmental education and critical thinking skills. | Website | ||
| Bronze | The Climate Trail 2.0 | An emotional impact game designed for grades 5 and beyond, educating players about the effects of climate change. William Volk, George Sanger and Bryan Kilburn developed the free game to cover topics such as the greenhouse effect and feedback loops. | Website | ||
| Bronze | Reentry Challenge | An empathy building exercise designed to shape learner’s attitudes around the reentry population, allowing participants to undergo scenarios a previously imprisoned individual may experience when reentering the community. Checkr Partner and Dave’s Killer Bread developed the game for people in a position of influence over hiring decisions or workplace culture. | |||
| Healthcare / Medical / Pharmaceutical / Nursing Games | Gold | smokeSCREEN | A game focused on preventing tobacco use in youth participants, by completing 10 levels of realistic situations to teach them refusal power. Carolyn Taylor, 1st Playable Productions, Schell Games, CVS Health Foundation,Yale Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science, FDA and NIH developed the game around misinformation of smoking and vaping. | Website | |
| Gold | Engage with Older Adults | An empathy training game designed to enhance elder care workers’ interactions with older adults. James LaPierre and Mental Health Association of Maryland developed the game to help healthcare professionals understand and engage with clients better. | Website | ||
| Bronze | Build a Bedroom | A game where participants identify bedroom environment conditions that contribute to poor sleep hygiene. Kevin Holloway, Center for Psychology, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and 2b3d Studios created the game to help people who have difficulty sleeping. | Website | ||
| Higher Education | Gold | Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity Game | A game created by E.I. Games LLC designed to deliver sensitivity training and education for students and employees regarding diversity, inclusion, and equity. It has as its objective to overcome avoidance to diversity training by making it approachable, entertaining, inclusive, helpful, practical and emotionally rewarding. | Website | |
| Silver | RefQuest | An online educational game developed by Learning Futures and The Library at Western Sydney University (WSU) available to all WSU students to learn how to correctly reference, to provide evidence in their work and acknowledge contributions. RefQuest uses a level structure where the player has to learn, and complete puzzles based on increasing complex categories based on their chosen referencing style. | Website | ||
| Bronze | FREDcast | An online forecasting game created by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, allows players to make regularly scheduled forecasts for four economic releases: gross domestic product (GDP), inflation, employment, and unemployment. Forecasts for each of the four variables are scored for accuracy, and a total monthly score is obtained from these scores. | Website | ||
| K-12 Education | Humanities | Gold | Win the White House | An interactive game that challenges players to manage a hypothetical presidential campaign, learning about the electoral process and influences on public opinion along the way. Filament Games and iCivics developed the game to help students understand the voting system in the United States. | Website |
| Bronze | Barista Sim | A game developed for people 16 and beyond studying business. Managing a coffeeshop through different stages of development, Tim Rogmans created the game to help increase understanding of basic functions and concepts of business. | Website | ||
| Bronze | Portrait of a Tyrant | A game created to help students engage with the Declaration of Independence, progressing through moral and political choices that must be made in early America. Justin Leites, Professor Danielle Allen and J Yang developed the adventure game to help participants comprehend the historical context and contemporary relevance of the Declaration of Independence. | Website | ||
| Literacy | Gold | Early Literacy Game | A digital learning experience that teaches kindergarten, first and second grade students key literacy subskills through a range of minigames and repeated opportunities to practice. The game follows a team of space commanders who are responsible for keeping the world safe from various environmental dangers. Early Literacy Game was created by The Game Agency. | ||
| Silver | Amplify Reading | A digital reading program for grades K-8 that leverages game-based learning to give students reading instruction and practice. The game utilizes a learning narrative where the students’ growth will match development of the narrative experiences. Amplify Reading was developed by Amplify. | Website | ||
| Silver | NexAgent by Circadence | An immersive network exploration game that places the student in the seat of an agent tasked with solving common network challenges. Designed for middle school through high school-aged students, the first-person game aims to teach network security foundational skills by completing objectives like interacting with simulation droids, identifying glitches in network configurations, and progressing through cyber tasks to address vulnerabilities. NexAgent was developed by Circadence Corporation. | Website | ||
| Bronze | Word Beach | A crossword puzzle game where players must solve puzzles using a Boggle-style circular letter bank. It is targeted toward K-12 students, primarily elementary-level English learners, but the game’s scalable difficulty is accessible to all ages. It utilizes daily puzzles to reward frequent players and reinforce learning. Word Beach was developed by Kooapps. | Website | ||
| SEL | Gold | At-Risk for Early Childhood Educators | Many people are surprised to learn that each year, over 8,700 three- and four-year-old children are expelled from state-funded preschool classrooms. This is three times the rate of their older peers, and in childcare settings can be 13 times higher. The expulsion rate is even more disproportionate when it comes to African American children: a 2017 study from the U.S. Department of Education found that although black children represent only 19 percent of preschool enrollment, they make up 47 percent of all suspensions. Suspensions and expulsions are problematic at this age because interrupting early childhood education has long-term academic, social, and emotional consequences such as increased likelihood to drop out of high school or to face incarceration. When young children exhibit disruptive behavior, early childhood educators are key to early identification that leads to the additional support they need. By helping young children regulate their emotions and building relationships with their caregivers, educators can provide the foundation for lifelong well-being and success. At-Risk for Early Childhood Educators is an interactive simulation that harnesses the power of conversation to support social-emotional learning and resilience of children in early grades. The simulation is designed to help educators who work with children ages 3-5 develop their understanding, knowledge, and skills in mental health and behavior management. As part of the simulation experience, users engage in role-play conversations with virtual children, as well as parents and other caregivers, that are designed to prepare them to lead real-life conversations around challenging behavior, identify students who may need additional support, and bring up their concerns with caregivers. | ||
| Gold | Hats & Ladders Career Readiness Platform | A comprehensive career learning platform that helps youth, ages 14 to 25, to develop career thinking so they can feel more confident and better informed about their future choices. | Website | ||
| Silver | Digital Wellness and Safety Game | A digital literacy and citizenship course dedicated to providing middle school students with the skills they need to safely and confidently navigate the digital world. The course will encourage students to take practical steps to protect their own privacy and safety online, while also teaching them how to evaluate content for accuracy, perspective, and motive. The course will acknowledge the benefits of a digital community and resources, while teaching learners to successfully navigate pitfalls inherent in the digital space. | |||
| Silver | Resilient Together: Coping with Loss at School | Tragically, it is likely that every school district will deal with the death of a staff member or student in their community. While causes of death can range from an accident to homicide or suicide, it is imperative that school mental health personnel, school administrators, and all school staff are ready to respond and provide support for students and colleagues in the aftermath of a loss. Despite the need to prepare for how to respond to a death in the school community, however, many schools are not adequately equipped with a crisis response plan to deal with such an event. According to the American Federation of Teachers, less than half of educators report that their school has a protocol for how to respond when a student experiences the death of someone close. Preparing an effective response is a necessary step to supporting healing in the school and community, building resilience, and restoring a safe and healthy learning environment, and it is imperative that school and district leaders have trained for situations that warrant such a response. Resilient Together: Coping with Loss at School is an interactive professional development simulation that harnesses the power of conversation to prepare schools to respond to a death in the school community. The simulation educates teachers and administrators across elementary, middle, and high school on the key elements of a crisis response plan and best practices for communicating with students and colleagues who are impacted by a loss in the school. It also focuses on postvention protocol, preparing school leaders to intervene in the aftermath of a death by suicide. As part of the simulation experience, users engage in role-play conversations with virtual students and colleagues across different situations related to the impact of a loss in the school community and how to prepare for a death in the school. The simulation is designed to build their knowledge, skills, and understanding to navigate difficult real-life conversations around these topics. | |||
| STEM | Gold | Lakeland | A town building game where players develop a lakeside community to learn about the nutrient cycle and humanity’s complicated relationship with farming, soil nutrition, and pollution. Targeted to middle and high school-aged students, this game gives students a challenge of balancing community and business needs with sustainability and town morale. Lakeland was developed by Field Day Lab in conjunction with the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, UW Madison; Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction; and United States Department of Agriculture Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water (USDA INFEWS). | Website | |
| Gold | Curse Reverse | A strategy platforming game where players must find and return stolen ancient treasures to their original sites in as few moves as possible. Designed for math students grades 5+, the game has students using math to change heights of towers and lengths of bridges to traverse obstacles and return the treasures to their rightful places. Curse Reverse was developed by Learning Games Lab, New Mexico State University with support from the National Science Foundation. | Website | ||
| Gold | Invite Only VR: A Vaping Prevention Game | A VR video game intervention developed to prevent use of JUULs/e-cigarettes by teens ages 12 to 16. Players take control of Mike, a teen who receives powers from a stranger that allow him to redo a single day repeatedly to get into an invite-only party and help prevent his friends from becoming addicted to vaping. Invite Only VR was developed by PreviewLabs and sponsored by Oculus Education for the play4REAL XR Lab at the Yale Center for Health and Learning Games. | Website | ||
| Silver | Pirates of Cartesian | A game that aims to teach functions to 8th grade students by helping a young pirate and her pet chicken overcome their challenges to find a lost treasure. The game focuses on teaching how to analyze and solve linear equations and pairs of simultaneous linear equations. Pirates of Cartesian was developed by ThinkBox. | Website | ||
| Silver | It’s Alive!…or is it? | A science-focused came made to teach 6th grade students how to identify things that are living, non-living, or something else. The game is designed to allow for individual exploration, so students may not follow the same path. The game is paired with an accompanying assessment to measure learning outcomes. It’s Alive! …or is it? was developed by StrongMind. | Website | ||
| Silver | Shady Sam | An 8-bit game where players take control of a sleezy loan shark whose boss, Shady Sam, pressures his employees into maximizing profits from all potential customers. It aims to give students an understanding of how loans can become dangerously expensive from an alternate viewpoint. Shady Sam was developed by McKinney for Next Gen Personal Finance. | Website | ||
| Silver | The Pack | An open-world game created by NYSCI and Design I/O where players control an avatar to entice creatures in surrounding ecosystems to join its pack. Creatures must be fed certain combinations of food, allowing the creatures to be used to develop functions. The purpose of the game is to teach computational thinking and foundational skills for coding. The Pack was developed by the New York Hall of Science in conjunction with Design I/O and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network with support from the JPB Foundation and support from the National Science Foundation. | Website | ||
| Silver | Math High School | A game where players help a frustrated coach and a team of players define and meet their athletic goals by using functions to understand performance data. Teaching 8th grade students about functions, the game gives them experience in constructing, reading and interpreting basic graphs. Math High School was developed by ThinkBox. | Website | ||
| Bronze | Cloud Machine | A series of visual puzzles to help 3rd through 8th grade student build a conceptual understanding of fractions and develop their visual problem-solving skills by filling clouds with exact amounts of liquid. Once a cloud is filled precisely, it will rain down onto the world below to help nourish plants and animals. Cloud Machine was developed by Curriculum Associates. | Website | ||
| Preschool Education | STEM | Gold | Kids STEM Lab | A multi-touch education game that allows kids to freely create structures that guide the flow of water or balls to generate different effects. Targeted to children ages 3-8, the game consists of 9 multiplayer STEM game themes and designed based on unstructured learning theory. Kids STEM Lab was developed by Sindrax Technology. | Website |
| Military / Government Games | Silver | Contagion | A game of ideological domination. The goal of the game is to win by either controlling regions or by converting population to follow your ideology. The game has four main factions. Player use agents to gain support for their ideology and to turn away the population from another faction’s ideology. Players learn speed and maneuverability in a confronted situation. Contagion was developed by the Naval Postgraduate School for use by the Department of Defense. | Website | |
| Bronze | StellarX | A user-friendly AI-enabled technology platform that allows users to create a virtual reality (VR) environment and training environment that can be used for training, simulations, design thinking, operations and maintenance or even layout configuration planning. StellarX does not require coding and is compatible with a variety of commercially available VR systems such as HTC Vive, HTC Vive Pro, Oculus Rift, Oculus Rift S, and Windows Mixed Reality. StellarX was created by OVA, a studio based in Quebec, Canada. | Website | ||
2020 Tabletop Award Winners
Corporate Sector Gold Medal Winner:
Impact Pursuit, created by STEEL OWL for Autodesk educates sales employees about the company’s sustainability effort. The game has employees build their own tree using information about the company’s sustainability efforts. The game is designed to strengthen employees’ understanding of the company’s sustainability mission. https://steelowl.com
K-12 Education Sector Winners
Gold Medal Awards:
Election Night!, created by Semper Smart Games, is a STEM focused tabletop board game where two players or teams battle for electoral votes to win the presidency. Election Night comes with a double- sided board with multiplication and addition version so players of multiple skill levels can master essential math while learning U.S. state geography. https://sempersmartgames.com/
Powder Keg A Revolutionary War Card Game, created by The EPIC Project @ KCAD, is a humanities focused tabletop card game where two sides fight against each other. Strategy is needed to win the war. https://sites.google.com/view/powder-keg-game
Race to the Moon, created by Ball State University, is a STEM focused two player competitive card game about the historic Space Race. Players take the role of either the US or the USSR, and the object is to be the first person to the moon. To win you need to combine research efforts, leadership, efficiency, safety and innovation. https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/race-to-the-moon2
Silver Medal Awards:
Roots of Power, created by Seriously Entertaining Education, is a literacy focused game that teaches Greek and Latin word roots. The game has a combination of chance, skill and collaborative based play. https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/roots-of-power
You Make Me Sick,created by The Partnership in Education of Duquesne University with funding from the Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) at the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) of the NIH. It is a board game where players fight 11 common infectious diseases while learning about the functions of the immune system. The game teaches about vaccines, antibiotics, and steps to staying healthy. www.thepartnershipineducation.com/assets/you-make-me-sick-board-game
Bronze Medal Awards:
Problem Scape Sama, created by RoundEd Learning, is a STEM focused card game that teaches players the meaning of equality in math. The game teaches you about different symbols in math and how they can sometimes have more than one meaning. www.roundedlearning.com
Fixing Foolish, created by Techno Nature, is a card game that teaches basic anatomy and physiology. The engaging card game includes true stories and injuries with ways to fix it. The game also includes colorful worksheets, unique anatomy guide, color coded body systems, cool icons for organ function and a systems mind map. www.technonature.com
Healthcare / Medical / Pharmaceutical / Nursing Games Silver Medal Winners:
Vax Bracket, created by Dr. Games Bond, uses competition and fun to teach the broad concepts of vaccines, immunity and disease spread. The objective of the game is to teach the players about immunocompromised citizens of our society and how they rely on herd immunity. http://drgamesbond.com/vaxbracket
RETAIN, created by Retain Labs Medical, is a digital and paper game that teaches neonatal resuscitation. Retain is a complement to the already existing neonatal training. Currently, neonatal resuscitation is taught through simulation based training and is cost and resource intensive which reduces availability. The RETAIN game makes it easily accessible and helps trainees learn resuscitation skills. https://www.retainlabsmedical.com
Military/Government Sector Silver Medal Winner:
DISTRIX, created by Distrix Games, is a game of skill in which two players—Red and Blue—compete to control more than half of the nine political districts in an imaginary state. A highly strategic affair, DISTRIX offers a game-based solution to America’s gerrymandering problem. www.distrixgames.com