Edutainment.

More than being a cacophonic portmanteau, this term describes a content designed to both entertain and educate - regardless the percentage and, obviously, the subjective meaning, of both ingredients. So edutainment ranges from the bible to sitcoms to government's mind controlling media. Today's people loves feeling smart, regardless the topic, so, despite the term lies now in the buzzword graveyard, it's surely together with the (very few) winners: today's media, including advertising, are based on forging knowledge in entertaining form and vice versa. Which, incidentally, hits one of the most ancient and basic design guideline of videogames: simulating, more or less, something realistic or plausible asking to the player to develop and test one or more skills.

Being a an Asteroids (1979) player means knowing how inertia and forces works, Battlezone (1980) simulates a tank in a way that U.S. Army wanted its customized version for training, SimCity (1989) have been used by the University Of Southern California for its classes, Assassin's Creed (2007) offers carefully crafted reconstructions of historic monuments, cities and scenarios used for telling its pseudo-historic tales.

Are gamers unconsciously learning? But, more importantly, what the gamers are learning?

Plot!

You'll be a good king, indeed. But will your kingdom be the greatest ever? Are you worthy to be remembered in history? Build structures, let your people live and work, make and invest money and became the best ruler ever - within the time limit, obviously! Use UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT for moving the cursor around the map and hit the A BUTTON on resources cells for seeing its type and quantity. Hold the A BUTTON on an empty space or an already built structure for opening the structure menu: follow the on-screen instructions and use UP and DOWN for interacting with an already built structure or use LEFT and RIGHT for selecting a new one and reading its description. Release the A BUTTON for building, replacing or removing a structure.

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