Hello readers, In this week’s blog post I will be reviewing and discussing video games that I played over the week. The games that I will be reviewing are called When Rivers Were Trails, and Father and Son. The game When Rivers Were Trails is an educational game that was made to teach people about how Native Americans would travel to relocate when Allotment Acts were taking place. The game is an exploration game with choices that impact your player, in each location you travel you will find another Native American. Each Native American belongs in different tribes but on occasion you will run into those who are a part of the same tribe as you. You are able to communicate, trade, and hunt with these tribes for a better chance of survival and also gain well being from listening to their advice. What I found most interesting about the game was that each story in the game was actually told by an individual from that specific Native tribe. I did not finish the game, I played as long as I could and used my better judgement to choose which option was best for my chances of surviving the travel. The game seemed to never end, I always had food and medicine but often found myself running out of well being. I’m not even sure how the game ends or if it ends, all I know is that along your journey you will learn about multiple tribes and will be put in realistic scenarios that were likely to happen during that time period.

Moving onto Father and Son, at first I was very confused on what the game was about. I found the game under two different categories which were history and empathy. This game was an exploration game for sure, I was not exactly sure where I had to go or what I had to do. At one point I did notice a recurring theme which was constantly being asked for coffee and hovering over a balcony for long periods of time. It took me a very long time to figure out where I was going and once I reached my destination the entire game kind of flipped its script. I thought my goal was to go to a museum and look at the artwork that the characters Father left behind for him to look at, but once I was able to click on the artwork I was taken back to the time it was being created and his Father did not even create the particular piece of art. I have a lot of mixed feelings about this game, It could have been a lot more organized and straight forward than it turned out to be. However, I do still think that it was educational in some ways. Once you were able to click on a specific piece of artwork it would provide a description of when it was made along with the meaning and backstory of the artwork. In that aspect I do understand why it was under the history category but I was still confused on the empathetic part. In this game the Father has left his son before he was even born to pursue his artwork and once the Father dies he asks his son to visit the museum where his artwork is located. Every single time my character was asked for coffee the subject of his Father was always brought up somehow which was very weird to me. Each time there was an interaction you had two different response choices one choice often was respectful toward the characters late Father and the other was very blunt and made it seem as if the character did not really care about his Father. It was all very confusing to me and I most likely will not be playing this game again.

Overall I really do like the idea of  creating games that can be used to learn about sensitive subjects. I am a visual learner and have to be very involved in whatever I am learning at the time to fully understand the topic and I really do wish that these types of games existed when I was in elementary school. I think it’s such a great way for kids to learn while having fun as well, I would love to play a board game that covers sensitive history topics because when you play a game like that you are fully involved and go through different emotions that can capture what the lesson was all about instead of having to sit in class for an hour taking notes on a lecture that you aren’t interested in. I would really like to see these times of games implemented in elementary schools, I think it is a great way to learn.