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This Game of Your Memories: Learn History Through Play
This Game of Your Memories: Learn History Through Play
Content
This activity invites young people and youth workers to engage with some of the most difficult moments in modern history — war, totalitarian regimes, and the fight for survival and freedom — through serious online narrative games created by youth.
In the project This Game of Your Memories, young Slovenians and Germans asked: How can we pass on the values and knowledge that older generations gained "the hard way"? As fewer eyewitnesses remain, preserving and sharing their stories becomes ever more important — so that we do not repeat history.
Through the principle of youth for youth, participants explored how today’s young people perceive extremism and how storytelling through video games — a familiar and powerful medium — can be used to pass on life lessons.
The result: 5 interactive games created by young people, using the free tool Twine, taught during workshops on the GatherTown platform. These games take players on a journey through oppressive systems and moments in history — from the gulags and concentration camps to North Korea and prohibition-era smuggling.
By completing this activity, you will:
- Learn about lived experiences of war, totalitarianism, and survival
- Understand how storytelling and empathy build historical awareness
- Reflect on the role of young people in preserving memory
Get inspired
The medium of games allows players to momentarily step into lives they never lived. By combining the creativity of youth with the deep insights gained from history, This Game of Your Memories shows how digital storytelling can become a tool of remembrance and resistance.
Games include:
- Escape from the Gulag (Slovene)
- Life in the Gulag (English)
- Alcohol Smuggling (English)
- Escape from a Concentration Camp (Slovene)
- Life in North Korea (Slovene)
Take action: activities for different roles
Explore the role-specific badges below to access tasks that deepen your understanding of memory, history, and digital education:
- Young people can play the games and reflect on how past events relate to their own values and future.
- Youth workers can facilitate storytelling workshops using these games and explore inter-generational learning.
- Youth organisations can integrate digital memory tools into long-term civic education strategies.
Suggested follow-up activities include
- Interview to Remember: Talk to an older person about a historical moment they experienced. Record or write down their memory and reflect on its meaning. Try and find parallels with today's world's events.
- Create Your Own Memory Game: Use Twine or another simple tool to build a small narrative game that explores a value or event from history.
- Host a Youth-Led Memory Reflection Event: Invite peers to play the games and hold a discussion, workshop, or exhibition on what we can learn from the past.
Claim open badge recognition
After completing this activity, participants can earn digital badges that recognise their competencies in:
- Historical reflection and critical empathy
- Digital storytelling and creative thinking
- Civic responsibility and remembrance
- Using games for social education
Who created this resource?
The games were developed by Slovenian and German youth with the support of Slovene organisation Socialna akademija and the German NGO Akademie Klausenhof. Using GatherTown and the Twine tool, young participants created 5 narrative games that explore the past so future generations can learn from it.
The Digital Systemic partnership and the Cities of Learning Network supports the integration of educational games into youth work practice, while reminding on the crucial role of youth workers and other educators in leading reflections and conversations about and around digital games, tools and topics explored by them - by young people.
Next steps: Try more games that can be used for educational purposes. Or even try out online tools and create your own simple online games that showcase important topics in your local/national realities/priorities.
Get activity badge
Remembering Through Games Get this badge
Awarded for completing (one of) the interactive activity This Game of Your Memories:
And for exploring narrative games that bring past events like war, totalitarianism, and survival to life. This badge recognises your ability to engage with historical memory through digital storytelling and reflect on how games can preserve values and lessons from the past.
Skills and experiences gained:
This badge supports the development of:
- Historical empathy and civic reflection
- Ethical thinking through storytelling
- Digital literacy and game-based learning
- Awareness of the value of lived experience
- Engagement with inter-generational memory
You have to finish 2 tasks to get the badge
Tasks
Task no.1
Evidence verified by: self-approved
Play at least one of the memory-based online games developed in the project (e.g. Life in the Gulag or Alcohol Smuggling).
Task no.2
Evidence verified by: one activity organiser
Reflect in writing or video: What values or historical lessons did the game convey?
Task no.3
Evidence verified by: one activity organiser
Identify one way you could preserve or share a story from the past in your own community or family.
Organisers
Digital Youth Work Resource Hub
Awero not-for-profit organisation manages this platform and develops it together with leading educational organisations. The European Union's programme Erasmus+ granted co-funding for building the first version of this platform. Contact support@awero.org.
Platform
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