Free Educational Games

In Palace of Poetry, a first-person narrative experience, players engage with the women of Genji’s world, immersing themselves in the culture, history, gender dynamics, and daily life of Heian-era Japan. The game seeks to bring this literary classic to a modern audience, making its timeless themes and intricate social world more accessible and engaging.

It is the summer of 1853. A small fleet of ships commanded by Matthew C. Perry have stormed into Edo Bay, engaging in no violence but causing immense panic. Over two hundred years had passed with Japanese borders closed to outsiders—and suddenly, these foreigners were at the country’s shores demanding open trade. You play as Tsumaki Naoharu: an ambitious, curious young samurai working under Abe Masahiro, the chief senior councillor of Tokugawa Japan. In his lofty position, Masahiro has the imperative duty of deciding how Japan will respond to this newfound threat. However, the answer to this deceptively simple question of, “How do we answer to the demands of the foreigners?” is far from clear.

The popular image of the samurai centers on combat and the mythical code of bushido. This short game explores the grinding economic reality of a low-ranking samurai in Tokugawa period (1600-1868) Japan. For its source material, it draws from a pathbreaking article by historian Constantine N. Vaporis ("Samurai and Merchant in Mid-Tokugawa Japan.")

Imagine you're a young samurai in Japan in 1701. You have to make an excruciating choice between family and honor – either go into impoverished exile with your mother and sister who will need your help to survive, or join your fellow masterless samurai in a quixotic quest to avenge the death of your dishonored lord. Which do you choose? Ako: A Test of Loyalty takes you into the story of the 47 ronin, one of the  most famous episodes in Japanese history.

How has Japan adapted to expanding foreign influence and likewise, how has the nation of the rising sun infiltrated the outside world? These are the questions you will be asking throughout your sojourn to and from Yokohama treaty port, a wide-open harbor of possibility, opportunity, and adventure. Race from Tokyo to Yokohama in this now-digitized rich and colorful sugoroku board game from 1872 and learn about travel, technology, and cultural exchange in Japan during the late-19th century.

Imagine you are a government censor working for the Japanese government in imperial Japan. Or an official in the CCD (Civil Censorship Detachment) at General Headquarters working under General Douglas MacArthur in the late 1940s during the Allied Occupation of Japan; an employee at Eirin, the self-regulatory agency for film ratings and regulation, after its establishment in 1949. The rules of censorship are constantly changing based on shifting political and practical considerations, and that, even from the start, these rules were never so clearcut.