The science is in. Video games have a long list of benefits for the creative mind, but what games support creativity the most? Here are 26 of the best video games to boost creativity.
When choosing something to play that will also inspire creativity, consider the critical thinking needed in the game, elements of play, exploration, well-being, and of course, self-expression. Video games are also powerful storytelling mediums that present a new way to explore different types of creative lifestyles, research for creative projects, and more.
Tips for Creative Play
Role-play
- Imagine yourself in the world of the video game. Build empathy with the character and see a world through different eyes.
- Interact and improvise your character’s role with online communities. (DayZ)
Breaks to Spark Ideas
- Use video games for short breaks during the incubation phase to trigger new connections and ideas.
Problem Solving
- Challenge yourself. Change the Difficulty. Try puzzle games to see problems in the video game differently to train the mind and improve creative thinking.
Relax and Find Flow
- Try relaxing games to tune out distractions and find stillness.
Train mindfulness
- Play games that have a lot of information on the screen. This can also train hand-eye coordination and decision making skills.
Building Games
One of the best video games for creativity that has been studied the most is Minecraft. In Minecraft, your adventure starts with your imagination. Break blocks, place them, and then do whatever you want. Explore an endless world, write your own story, and build anything you can imagine. From the simplest homes to the grandest castles, the humblest ideas, to the most ambitious plans, how you play is up to you. Be brave, be curious, and be inventive. Play alone or with others across multiple platforms.
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Super Mario Maker 2 allows players to unleash their creativity and create their own world map. Dive into the single-player Story Mode and play built-in courses to rebuild Princess Peach’s castle. Make your own courses, alone or together. And with a Nintendo Switch Online, you can share your courses, access a near-endless supply made by others, enjoy online multiplayer.
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Dreams is an extraordinary and ever-expanding game universe from the award-winning Media Molecule, creators of LittleBigPlanet and Tearaway. In this creative game, you can make your own games, artwork, movies, music, or discover community-made games and creations from around the world. The latest evolution of the studio’s Play, Create, Share maxim, Dreams allows you to unleash your creativity. Bring your ideas to life with innovative, easy-to-use tools, then share them with a global community.
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In Terraria, the world is at your fingertips as you fight for survival, fortune, and glory. Delve deep into cavernous expanses, test your mettle in combat, or construct your own city – the choice is yours! Terraria blends elements of classic action games with sandbox-style creativity. The Terraria adventure is truly as unique as the players themselves!
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In Cities: Skylines, you can build the city of your dreams. Whether it’s a smog-filled industrial revolution or a quiet beach town ideal for tourists powered by renewable energy. See what it’s like to manage a city and maintain various elements including, its budget, health, employment, education, pollution levels, and more.
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Music Games
Have you ever wanted to be a DJ playing in front of thousands around the world?
Fuser is a rhythm game developed by Harmonix and published by NCSoft. Take the role of a DJ at a large concert and make a mashup of different songs. Featuring single-player, cooperative, and competitive multiplayer modes that let players collaborate on creating a mix or battle against each other.
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Let’s Sing 2021
Another creative game to express yourself and relieve some tension is the game Let’s Sing. Sing hits off the Billboard charts such as Billie Eilish with “Bad Guy”, TONES AND I with “Dance Monkey”, Panic! at the Disco with “High Hopes”, and Seal with “Kiss From A Rose”. Whether you’re training your voice or hosting the next karaoke party for friends and family – creative fun is guaranteed.
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Just Dance 2021 is the ultimate dance game, with 40 hot new tracks from hits like “Rain On Me” by Lady Gaga & Ariana Grande, “Kick It” by NCT 127, and “Ice Cream” by BLACKPINK x Selena Gomez. Get moving on your own or start a dance party your friends and family can enjoy! The game features over 600 songs with the Just Dance® Unlimited subscription streaming service. One month FREE included with the game! To play you, use your smartphone to track moves with the Just Dance Controller app – no additional accessories required.
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Revived from its days on the ps2, Amplitude is a music rhythm game where the player controls a beat blaster ship across a lane of six tracks, each track representing a musical instrument and containing note gems that the player shoots at in time with the music. Play single-player or multiplayer for up to four players with a soundtrack of over 30 songs, including artists such as Darren Korb (Transistor), C418 (Minecraft), Danny Baranowsky (Crypt of the Necrodancer), Insomniac Games, and Freezepop, Kickstarter backers, and music lovingly crafted by Harmonix’s talented in-house composers.
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Puzzle Games
Set in the mysterious Aperture Science Laboratories, Portal has been called one of the most innovative puzzle games that offers hours of unique and creative gameplay. The games consist of puzzles that must be solved by teleporting the player’s character and simple objects using a portal gun. In the sequel, you can solve the puzzles with a friend.
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In LittleBigPlanet 3, you can discover a world of endless creative surprises as you explore all corners of the Imagisphere. Meet the inhabitants of the mysterious planet Bunkum and face the nefarious Newton in this rich, vibrant world. LittleBigPlanet 3 is a puzzle-platformer game that features elements of a sandbox game. Players can create their own levels, characters, objects, such as power-ups, tools, decorations, stickers, or vehicles, hub levels, Pods (effectively the character’s ‘home’), and other fun creative things.
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From the people who brought the award-winning puzzle games Rez Infinite and Lumines, comes a Tetris game like no other. Tetris Effect is a mind-blowing puzzle game that can be played on your tv screen or in VR. This legendary remix of a classic game comes with 30+ stages and 10+ modes to challenge the mind and give a feast for all senses.
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Scribblenauts
Scribblenauts is an emergent puzzle action video game first published for the Nintendo DS but has now grown across multiple platforms and versions. The objective of Scribblenauts, as implied by its catchphrase “Write Anything, Solve Everything”, is to complete puzzles to collect “Starites”, helped by the player’s ability to summon any object (from a database of tens of thousands) by writing its name. Use the power of your imagination to solve exciting puzzles in endless ways.
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Drawn to life is an action-adventure platform video game for the Nintendo DS, and its latest installment has expanded to smartphones and PC. in the game, you take on the role of the Creator, unlocking the mysterious connection between the two worlds and creating a hero to save them both! The game features a brand-new Creation Tool that expands the creative possibilities with millions of colors, unique stickers, templates, new hero animations, and a mix and match look to truly bring your imagination to life!
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The Witness
The Witness is a single-player open-world game with dozens of locations to explore and over 500 puzzles. In this puzzle game that respects your intelligence, you wake up alone on a strange island, and you’re left to explore the island in hopes of discovering clues, regaining your memory, and somehow finding your way home.
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Collaboration Games
Jackbox Party Games have been making collaboration games since 1995. Their latest party pack includes five new games: the hit threequel Quiplash 3, the collaborative chaos of The Devils and the Details, the fierce drawing game Champ’d Up, the speech game Talking Points, and the guessing game Blather ‘Round. Use phones or tablets as controllers and play with up to 8 players and an audience of 10,000!
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Have you ever dreamed of completing your own mission impossible? In this unique puzzle game, you are the bomb diffuser, but you’re not alone. One player is trapped in a room with a ticking time bomb they must defuse. The other players are the “Experts” who must give the instructions to defuse the bomb by deciphering the information found in the Bomb Defusal Manual. But there’s a catch: the Experts can’t see the bomb, so everyone will need to talk it out. Solve puzzles and practice communication skills in this exciting puzzle game that puts you to the test to defuse bombs before they go off.
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Experience Games
Step into the shoes of Henry David Thoreau and practice simple living in this open-world game based on the story of Thoreau’s life in the woods alone at Walden Pond. The award-winning game features a dynamic and changing natural environment filled with exquisite details, as well as a multi-faceted narrative following Thoreau’s quest for solitude and inspiration in the woods during a time of personal and social crises.
Can you balance your basic needs for survival against your search for beauty and the sublime? Will you live life “deliberately”? Or will you live a life of “quiet desperation”? Find out in this critically acclaimed title that Smithsonian Magazine has called “the world’s most improbable video game.”
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Explore the ancient, mysterious world of Journey as you soar above ruins and glide across sands to discover its secrets. Play alone or in the company of a fellow traveler and explore its vast world together. Featuring stunning visuals and a Grammy-nominated musical score, Journey delivers a breathtaking experience like no other.
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Experience the award-winning game, flOw, a game about piloting an aquatic organism through a surreal biosphere where players consume other organisms, evolve, and dive into the abyss. With an embedded design of DDA (dynamic difficulty adjustment), players with differing skill levels can intuitively customize their game experience and enjoy the game at their own pace. You can play as one of 5 creatures, each in a unique environment. Lose yourself in the crisp “deep blue” in an organic experience that will allow you to glide, flit, and flOw through the universe.
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The award-winning game, Flower, lets you take control of the wind as you explore and navigate beautiful, lush environments. Journey through varied landscapes at your own pace, interacting with and changing the environment as you go, and find balance and harmony in your surroundings. This is an interactive escape that takes you on an emotional journey like no other game you’ve ever experienced with unique controls.
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From the artistic mind behind Journey and Flower comes ABZÛ, a beautiful underwater adventure that evokes the dream of diving. Immerse yourself in a vibrant ocean world full of mystery and bursting with color and life. Perform fluid acrobatics as the Diver, using graceful swimming controls. Discover hundreds of unique species based on real creatures and form a powerful connection with the abundant sea life. Interact with schools of thousands of fish that procedurally respond to you, each other, and predators. Linger in epic seascapes and explore aquatic ecosystems modeled with unprecedented detail. Descend into the heart of the ocean where ancient secrets lie forgotten. But beware, dangers lurk in the depths. ‘ABZÛ’ is from the oldest mythologies AB, meaning water, and ZÛ, meaning to know. ABZÛ is the ocean of wisdom.
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Escape to a deserted island and create your own paradise as you explore, create, and customize in the Animal Crossing: New Horizons game. Your island getaway has a wealth of natural resources that can be used to craft everything from tools to creature comforts. You can hunt down insects at the crack of dawn, decorate your paradise throughout the day, or enjoy sunset on the beach while fishing in the ocean. The time of day and season match real life, so each day on your island is a chance to check-in and find new surprises all year round.
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Exploration Games
Step into a world of discovery, exploration, and adventure in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a boundary-breaking new game in the acclaimed series. Travel across vast fields, through forests, and to mountain peaks as you discover what has become of the kingdom of Hyrule in this stunning Open-Air Adventure.
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Subnautica is a survival game out of this world. While traveling through space, you have crash-landed on an alien ocean world, and the only way to go is down. Explore shallow coral reefs to treacherous deep-sea trenches, lava fields, and bio-luminescent underwater rivers. Manage your oxygen supply as you explore kelp forests, plateaus, reefs, and winding cave systems. The water teems with life: Some of it helpful, much of it harmful. You will have to brave it all to survive, build, and escape this alien ocean.
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DayZ is a hardcore survival and open-world exploration game that is also an ongoing social experiment. Set in a fictional post-soviet country of Chernarus, which has been struck by an unknown virus, turning the majority population into frenzied infected and driving what’s left of humanity to collapse. You are one of the few immune to the virus, and there’s only one rule, stay alive, no matter what. How far will you go to survive? With no checkpoints or saves, when you die, you lose everything and have to start over.
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Zach is an international writer, photographer, filmmaker, martial artist, and creator of Creative Enso, the Zen art of creative living. His goal is to empower and inspire creatives to live healthier, happier, and more creative lifestyles.
