Every summer, our team at EMC² Learning takes a short break from designing classroom resources to do something equally important: play. And not just any kind of play… we roll dice, draft tiles, draw cards, build engines, sabotage each other, and explore strange new lands (both literal and metaphorical) through some seriously engaging board games.
But here’s the twist: even when we’re “off the clock,” our brains are always buzzing with ideas. As Engagement Engineers, we’re constantly studying game mechanics to uncover what makes a game feel fun — and then translating those ideas into powerful pedagogy for the classroom.
Today, we’re inviting you to join us in a sneak peek behind the scenes of our work (err… play?) together last week when Michael made the trip out to visit John and his family at their home just outside of Washington, D.C. In no particular order, here’s a look at the games we played at our summer summit and just a few of the educational insights each one sparked.
At first glance, Kingdomino might seem like just another tile game. But behind its playful design is a masterclass in strategic decision-making and visual learning. Players draft tiles and build a 5×5 grid, connecting matching terrain types to form high-scoring regions. It’s elegant. It’s fast. And it subtly teaches spatial reasoning, long-term planning, and the value of trade-offs.
What grabbed our attention wasn’t the gameplay itself — it was how the mechanics felt. Every round offered players meaningful choices and visible progress. That combination of clarity and creativity is exactly what great classroom activities aim to deliver.
And with the inspiration of Kingdomino fresh in our minds, say hello to a fully editable spin on a territory takeover review activity that can easily be used in any lesson plan.
If You Liked This, You’ll Love: EMC² Learning’s Uncharted Territories
In this hands-on storytelling resource, students use drag-and-drop tiles and illustrated icons to build fully customized “maps of learning.” Designed right inside of Google Slides (or PowerPoint), this activity blends spatial reasoning, narrative writing, and content mastery — letting students see their thinking as it takes shape. It’s part visual literacy, part storycraft, and 100% student-centered.
Wingspan is the kind of game that makes you lean in. From the gorgeous illustrations to the layered engine-building mechanics, every element feels purposeful and richly detailed. Players compete to attract birds to their wildlife preserves, each bird bringing its own unique ability that triggers cascading effects as your engine grows. It’s one part science lesson, one part strategic marvel — all delivered with the meditative pacing of a nature documentary.
But for us, the real genius of Wingspan isn’t the birds. It’s the systems thinking. Players must manage multiple resources, plan for future rounds, and chain together abilities in clever combinations. It’s thoughtful, dynamic, and endlessly replayable — exactly the kind of layered engagement we strive for in our classroom designs.
So now, instead of birds, what if students built out branching trees of skills? Instead of egg-laying engines, what if they summoned elemental powers tied directly to their content knowledge?
If You Liked This, You’ll Love: EMC² Learning’s Skill Tree Smashers
In this epic EMC² Learning review game, students form teams and compete to level up four elemental skill paths — Earth, Wind, Water, and Fire — by answering review questions. With every correct answer, they unlock powerful abilities and build branching “skill trees” that lead to special attacks, combo bonuses, and strategic edge. It’s collaborative, chaotic, and fully customizable to your content. Wingspan gave us the layered strategy. We just added the explosions.
To the untrained eye, Wyrmspan might look like just a reskinned Wingspan. But give it one round, and you’ll feel the difference. Instead of birds fluttering into a nature preserve, players delve deep into mysterious caverns, attracting dragons to their ever-expanding lairs. It’s a familiar engine-building structure, but with thematic twists — a moody color palette, a rich fantasy setting, and a sense of narrative weight that sets it apart.
That’s the magic of good game design: take a proven mechanic, change the setting, and suddenly everything feels new again. The strategy is still there, but the re-theme reframes the experience. It got us thinking — how many classroom tools suffer from the same fate? The same tired syllabus. The same slide deck. The same first-day script.
Which leads us to the million dollar question: if a game can feel fresh and attract a whole new audience simply by reimagining its world, how much energy from our students could we capture if we reimagined the start of a school year in a similar fashion?
If You Liked This, You’ll Love: EMC² Learning’s Story-Powered Syllabus Collection
At EMC² Learning, we took the dusty old syllabus and gave it the fantasy epic glow-up it never knew it needed. These fully editable, theme-driven templates (like Realm of Nobles) invite students to embark on a yearlong quest of learning, discovery, and self-mastery. With realms to explore, items to earn, and villains to outwit, your course intro becomes a call to adventure — not just a list of rules. Built in Google Slides and fully customizable for any subject area.
This game was unlike anything else we played during the summit. The Night Cage drops players into a pitch-black labyrinth, armed with only a flickering candle and the vague memory of where they’ve already been. It’s a fully cooperative experience where each move reshapes the map — and nothing stays in place for long.
What makes it so gripping isn’t just the theme (though the mood is immaculate) — it’s the fact that players must navigate a space that’s always changing. You can’t brute force your way through. You must remember, adapt, and cooperate. The board resets itself, pathways disappear, and if you don’t communicate, you’re lost.
It reminded us how powerful unpredictability can be in the learning process. A shifting environment demands real-time thinking, resilience, and strategic risk-taking — all qualities we want our students to develop.
We took that feeling of disorientation and discovery and transformed it into a classroom-ready experience where no two visits are the same.
If You Liked This, You’ll Love: EMC² Learning’s Memory Manor
In this eerie and engaging EMC² Learning resource, student teams explore different “rooms” in a mysterious manor — each room representing a different type of task or challenge tied to course content. The more often you return to a room, the harder (and more rewarding) the challenges become. It’s part puzzle, part memory game, part strategy simulation — all wrapped in a twisted haunted house vibe. Like The Night Cage, it rewards careful planning, creativity under pressure, and teamwork. Just don’t get lost in the hallways!
This one’s easy to overlook — but we’re glad we didn’t. Castle Combo is a compact card-laying game where players aim to build a mighty kingdom, sending forth a herald with the power to summon cards in clever arrangements that earn bonuses and cascades of powerful combos. Think Tetris meets engine-building — but with bards, royals, and chain reactions that make you feel like a tactical genius when everything clicks into place.
What struck us most wasn’t just the satisfying combos, but the thematic blend of construction and cleverness. You’re not just building — you’re architecting systems where each move reinforces the next. And in a classroom setting, that mindset of intentional build-out is gold. It pushes students to think critically about structure, efficiency, and synergy — all while feeling like they’re assembling something epic.
In drawing inspiration from Castle Combo, we wanted to take that same layered logic and turn it into a student-powered simulation where players take charge of an entire village — building up their communities through decision-making, creativity, and deep content connections.
If You Liked This, You’ll Love: EMC² Learning’s Guild Builders
This immersive EMC² Learning resource drops students into the role of village leaders tasked with expanding their guilds across multiple domains — agriculture, training, diplomacy, and even public festivities. It’s a build-your-own-civilization-style challenge packed with layered review tasks, interactive bracket battles, emoji mashups, LEGO builds, and strategic scoring mechanics. Castle Combo gave us the spark. Guild Builders gives students the keys to the kingdom.
There’s no way around it — We’re Doomed is bonkers. Equal parts party game and social experiment, it drops players into the final minutes before an apocalyptic disaster, where each faction must contribute resources to build a rocket that can escape Earth… but there’s only room for a few survivors. And here’s the twist: the game is played in real time, with just 15 minutes on the clock, and a deck of unpredictable events that throw everything into chaos.
Some events ask you to stand on one foot. Others let you steal from your neighbors. Some will just burn the world down around you. And somehow, it works. There’s something weirdly delightful about the sheer absurdity of it all — how the wildness brings people together, forces quick thinking, and adds a layer of levity to the tension.
And that was the big takeaway for us. Serious collaboration doesn’t always need to look serious. Sometimes the silliest moments are the ones students remember — and return to — the most.
We loved the way the game kept everyone on their toes, disrupted routines, and used randomness to amplify buy-in. So we built a classroom-ready version packed with zany events and unpredictable obstacles — but with real academic muscle under the hood.
If You Liked This, You’ll Love: EMC² Learning’s Sundown Showdown
This high-energy EMC² Learning activity drops students into rival “camps” competing for survival in a mysterious wilderness. Teams complete challenges tied to academic skills — but the real fun kicks in when Special Event Cards throw everything into chaos. Maybe everyone has to work in slow motion. Maybe one team temporarily loses the ability to use the letter “E.” Maybe you’ve just been shrunk down to the size of a gnome and now must complete your work under the table. It’s frantic, funny, and surprisingly formative. Like We’re Doomed, this resource proves you can be serious about learning — and still have a blast doing it.
When we first stumbled across this one on the Target shelves, Grass is Greener looked like little more than an innocent card game about keeping up your lawn. But this one gets dirty fast — and that’s exactly what makes it great. Players take turns building up their perfect yards while sabotaging their neighbors with raccoons, crabgrass, nosy HOA agents, and a steady stream of passive-aggressive shade.
This game leans hard into the idea that winning isn’t just about improving your score — it’s about messing with someone else’s. And the more we played, the more we realized just how powerful (and hilarious) that mechanic can be. The vibe is light and breezy, but the take-that gameplay gets cutthroat in the best way — and it’s a perfect reminder that good games don’t always need to be polite. Sometimes, chaos is precisely the point.
We loved the push-pull of building yourself up while subtly (or not-so-subtly) dragging others down. That kind of controlled sabotage makes for great strategy and even better storytelling. So we built a resource that leans all the way into the volatility of a high-stakes marketplace, where timing, tactics, and a little trickery can make all the difference.
If You Liked This, You’ll Love: EMC² Learning’s Coin Crashers
In this EMC² Learning review activity, students take the role of investment firms in a chaotic cryptocurrency market. Will they collect rare coins to boost their portfolio? Tank their rivals’ futures by crashing the market? Or cash out early to protect their gains? The mechanics reward strategy, timing, and just the right amount of sneakiness. Inspired by the mischievous charm of Grass is Greener, this resource turns student review into a high-stakes economic sandbox — and nobody’s yard is safe.
Not every deck-builder needs to be about spells and swords. The Hunger drops players into the cloaks of hungry vampires stalking a moonlit countryside in search of blood — but with a race-against-the-sun twist that adds real urgency to every decision. Players recruit cards to build their decks, increase movement, hunt villagers, and collect treasures. But the more you collect, the slower you become. Push your luck too far, and you might never make it back to the crypt before daybreak.
This central tension between speed and scoring is exactly what we shoot for when we think about gamified instruction. It’s not just about getting the most; it’s about knowing when to stop. And the theme? Absolutely perfect for the mechanics at play. From vampire broods to fleeting nightfall, the entire experience feels like a gothic sprint with strategic soul.
We were hooked by the way The Hunger builds pressure with every turn. Risk vs. reward. Mobility vs. greed. Strategy vs. time. So we flipped the board and brought that same high-stakes energy to the classroom with a battle map crawling with rival vampires, valuable targets, and sinister sabotage.
If You Liked This, You’ll Love: EMC² Learning Hexagon Hunters (Village of the Vampire)
This EMC² Learning activity sends student teams on a mission to rack up LIFE POINTS by answering questions, earning dice rolls, and slinking across a haunted game board filled with villagers, crypts, and enchanted relics. But every space is single-use, and rivals are lurking everywhere. Should you play it safe — or risk it all for a bigger reward? The base game is thrilling, and it’s just one of nine spooky, silly, or sci-fi-themed variants available in the full Hexagon Hunters collection.
The activities featured in this blog post are just a handful of the 1000+ resources available and on their way to arrive shortly in the EMC² Learning library. This entire library is available to all members with an active Engagement Engineer or Engagement Engineer PLUS account, and is included with your annual site membership. We hope you’ll consider joining us as an Engagement Engineer to unlock a full year of site access. For complete details including our exclusive limited time offer for annual site membership, click here.
