Simulation Games for Primary School

[ReverentCreature]

We are looking for new simulation games for our school to teach children how computers simulate real life scenarios. We need some new games along the lines of Theme Hospital (where you manage staff/money/patients), Pharoah (where you manage citizens/buildings/crime) or Beach Life (where you manage customers/refreshments/staff/money).

 

The trouble is a lot of the games out there are too old now for Windows 7 64bit. Some of them are not about managing staff or money either. We dont want to buy a simulation game thats about following a story, controlling a ship or caring for a pet!

[CESIL]

There are some pretty good open source sims along the same lines as Theme Park and the transports sims.

 

Try these:

Welcome to Amusement Park Physics

There is a load here too... Open source Simulation games - OSSD

[ReverentCreature]

Thanks but again this is controlling or moving rides and aircraft and we already have stuff like that. It needs to be a game where the children are hiring cleaners, keeping customers happy, spending their money wisely, and so on... or if its city building, putting water in, managing traffic, controlling taxes, and so on...

[TechMonkey]

Would some Flash games be OK? There are quite a few Lemonade stand simulations that may do for a business one.

[CAM]

Would business sims work? OpenTTD is a national transport simulator and Cities in Motion is a friendlier looking city-wide public transport simulator. In both you add lines, move people from place to place and try turn a profit. Downside, OpenTTD is very complex and CiM starts easy but gets tricky as your network grows until it turns a regular profit.

[ReverentCreature]

Some of these are think are aimed at secondary level. LinCity-NG is on the right lines but its difficult to tell what the buildings are and you cant see anything really happening. The lemonade stand one is good but its more about adjusting values so Im not sure it would hold their interest for a few lessons. Cities in motion looks like it might be too complex for Primary Age.

 

With Theme Hospital if you didnt have enouch receptionists or GP's, queues formed and patients got upset if there werent enough seats. With Beach Life, people would leave the resort, angry because there were no toilets and it was the "worst holiday ever". This is the kind of thing we are after.

Edited November 21, 2013 by ReverentCreature

[simpsonj]

If you don't mind spending money, then you could always try GOG.com which has games like Theme Hospital which have been adapted to run on Windows 7...

[CESIL]

The biggest issue we found with sims and primary pupils was that they lack the attention span to wait for thing to happen in the game..

 

...exactly the same reason I was never a big fan of that style of game ;-)

[ReverentCreature]

Ahh I found one that looks promising...

Hysteria Hospital

Children have to keep the queues down, buy suitable equipment and treat patients.

 

Things hapen very quickly in this game and they wont spend ages designing the hospital.

They go quickly get straight into running it.

[DMcGuigan]

It looks rather like

 

There are quite a few games like this I think.

[ReverentCreature]

Thanks Ive just found Diner Dash and it looks good for the younger children. Early KS2 maybe (Years 3&4). It gets them talking about what the computer is silulating. How things have to be done in a certain order like in real life. How the computer simulates what happens if people dont get served quickly enough. That kind of thing.