It continues to be time for end-of-year “Best” lists.

You can see all my previous Online Learning Games “Best” lists (and there are a lot since I’ve doing this since 2007) here. Note that they’re also continually revised and updated.

Here are my picks from the second part of 2025:

This Research On “Leaderboards” Shows Why Blooket Is Now My Favorite Online Learning Game

What’s It is an interesting and useful word game. There are four lines, and each line has a scrambled word. You have five minutes to unscramble all of them. Though it’s too hard for English Language Learners, the idea behind the game is not. It would be easy to have students create their own on paper and have their classmates give them a try. I’m adding this info to The Best Ideas For Using Games In The ESL/EFL/ELL Classroom.

Flash Museum has lots of old Flash games that have been revised to work on the Internet now.  They could be useful to teachers of English Language Learners who want to use adventure games with their students with walkthroughs.  See more information about this at Another Gift From My Peer Tutors: Video Game Walkthroughs That Are Great For ELLs.

We Will Write is a Kahoot-like writing game, somewhat similar to Groovelit and Frankenstories.  I’m adding it to The Best Online Games Students Can Play In Private Virtual “Rooms”

Typer is a typing game where you can compete against friends. I’m adding it to The Best Online Games Students Can Play In Private Virtual “Rooms”

Learn The World Map lets you…learn about the world.  I’m adding it to The Best Online Geography Games.

FreeGuessr is an online geography game. I’m adding it to The Best Online Geography Games.

Langguessr challenges you to…guess languages.

This video from Edutopia (and the elaborated transcript) is a good example of gamifying inductive learning (categorization is an important element). However, it seems to require a fair amount of teacher prep time. I could see using it with my ELL Newcomers (give them a sheet with the categories of feelings, animals, jobs, along with cards they would use to sort). But I would ask my peer tutors to create it all during days when their students were absent. I’m adding this info to The Best Resources About Inductive Learning & Teaching and The Best Ideas For Using Games In The ESL/EFL/ELL Classroom.

Brilliant uses AI to create STEM-related games.

Geoguesser (not to be confused with the popular Geoguessr game) is a new site with a variety of standard geography games. The cool twist, though, is that you can create private virtual “rooms” and play against your friends. I’m adding this info to:

The Best Online Geography Games

The Best Online Games Students Can Play In Private Virtual “Rooms”

Describe The Word is a Charades/Taboo-like online game that provides you words, and then you have to say clues to it into your microphone without saying the actual word. AI then has to guess the word based on your clues. A game like this is obviously much more fun when you play it with a partner or in groups, but it’s a good game students can play at home if there aren’t others in the house who speak English.

The NY Times has announced a feature that now lets any subscriber create their own custom Wordle puzzle. You don’t need to be a subscriber to play Wordle, though, so if a teacher subscribes they can make it accessible to all their students. Of course, there are quite a few other sites that pretty much allow you to do this already,  but being able to have it hosted on The Times website would be pretty cool!