12 Cool Games And Apps To Challenge Your Situational Awareness Skills

Last Updated on October 5, 2023 by Editorial Team

Situational awareness, or knowing what’s happening in your environment at all times and how it can potentially affect you, is important.

The term situational awareness is generally used in the context of healthcare, aviation, and the military where quick decision-making is required. These decisions could have grave repercussions and mean the difference between life and death in these contexts.

But situational awareness is also used and is equally important in everyday life. It could help you make simple decisions like avoiding a pothole while driving and save yourself from grave dangers like hitting the brakes before you run into another car. 

In this blog, we’ll be looking at various apps and games that can help enhance your situational awareness.

Interactive online games to develop situational awareness

Online games are mainly played for the fun of it all. But, they also serve to build and strengthen various skills and capabilities. Situational awareness is one of them. 

Here are 5 games that effectively combine the fun component with the skill-building component.

1. Vortelli’s Pizza Delivery

Vortelli’s Pizza Delivery

Driving is a skill that requires immense situational awareness to navigate through road systems and reach your destination safely. Hence, this game is a perfect choice to level up your situational awareness skills.

As the title indicates, you take on the role of a pizza delivery guy who is required to deliver orders on time. So you drive a car all over the city to make your deliveries. While you drive the car, you will have to follow the green arrows to reach the exact place where your client is waiting for pickup. 

Plus, you must pay attention to other vehicles and people around you so everyone is safe. While doing all this, you will be making split-second decisions and exercising your situational awareness skills.

2. Who Is?

Who Is?

“Who Is” is a clue-finding game where the player is presented with various situations and has to answer the questions based on the clues they have noticed in the presented scenario.

The game starts with three tutorial scenarios where the player is made familiar with the rules and how to find the clues that are hidden in plain sight. Then as the player keeps solving the questions, you level up, and the questions keep getting harder. The player can take as much time as they require to think out of the box and find out “who is?”.

Situational awareness about the various things, people, and even animals in the scenarios makes it possible for the player to gauge what happened in the scenario and who could have been responsible for it.

3. Ice Cream, Please!

Ice Cream, Please!

In this game, the player runs an ice cream store. They see what the customers have ordered and try to get all the details right. This includes choosing the right cone, ice cream flavor, berries, and syrup. This game is also a race against time to fulfill as many customer orders as possible in the shortest possible time. The player can only make three mistakes.

To be constantly and concurrently aware of what the customer is asking for and what the available options are, what ingredients will go where, how much time is left on the clock, and how many mistakes you can make requires the use of situational awareness.

4. Maze

Maze

In the game of Maze, the player has to guide the ball out by choosing the correct path and avoiding all the blocks and traps. As the level goes up, the mazes get bigger and more complicated. At every junction, the ball stops and shows the player the possible ways they can go from there. The game has 400 mazes that the player can take as much time as they want to solve.

This game requires the player to visually analyze the maze and be aware of the exit as well as everything that blocks its way. Situational awareness comes into play when the player has to choose the best way out before they even begin moving because if they take one wrong turn, the ball gets stuck with no way out.

5. Solitaire

 Solitaire

Solitaire is a famous card game. The objective is to arrange all 13 cards, ace through king, in ascending order. While there are a total of 52 cards being played, at the beginning of the game, only 7 are visible to the player. The player has to make 4 suits, each consisting of 13 cards arranged in ascending order. As the player keeps making the suits, more and more cards are revealed, which they have to sort where they belong.

The game of solitaire requires the individual to be aware of all 4 suits at all times. Situational awareness comes in handy because if the player loses sight of all their cards, they can get stuck in a situation where there are no more moves possible.

6. Airplane Survival

Airplane Survival

Situational awareness is a highly regarded skill in non-combat and combat flying. Being aware of your surroundings and having the ability to comprehend and act on various dynamic parameters like flight conditions, location, unexpected distractions, airspace reservations, etc., is essential to flying safely.

Based on this, we have the Airplane Survival game, wherein the player is a combat pilot who must dodge missiles coming to attack the airplane. The missiles appear randomly and in any number, so the pilot must be highly alert at all times and notice the surroundings to avoid colliding with the missiles.

Players with high situational awareness skills can reach high scores and move up the levels, which are trickier than before. Others can refine their skills by trying easy levels multiple times and subsequently playing difficult levels as they gain expertise.

Apps that help analyze situations

Situational awareness can be built in everyday life. You don’t necessarily have to go to your PC or laptop for it. Here is a list of 6 handy apps that can be virtually installed on your phone and help in enhancing your awareness of the real world.

1. Chess Online

Chess Online

From tutorials on how to play chess to finding a human or computer opponent who plays at your chosen level of difficulty, this chess app has it all. It is also available for all Android and iOS devices.

It ranks your daily performance, allows you to play several games at the same time, and slowly improves your performance by increasing the level of difficulty you play. At the end of every game, it also gives you a chance to analyze your moves and where you went wrong.

Chess, when played physically or online, requires situational awareness at all times. You not only have to be aware of all your pieces and what move to make next but also of your opponent’s. Being able to analyze your moves at the end of every game can help you see your blindspots and the areas where you can stand to be more aware.

App link: Playstore | Appstore

2. Sudoku.com

Sudoku.com

This sudoku app, available for both Android and iOS, allows you to choose your own difficulty level and play as many games as you want. It also has a daily challenge, where if you complete one sudoku daily, you get a trophy at the end of the month.

It starts from the very basics, where it gives you a step-by-step tutorial on how to play sudoku. After that, it continuously tracks your progress and allows you to see how far you’ve come. The game of sudoku requires you to be situationally aware of all rows and columns constantly. One wrong number in the wrong cell can throw off the whole game.

App link: Appstore | Webapp

3. Bouncy Ball

Bouncy Ball

Available for Android, this game has 20 worlds and over 800 levels. Your goal is to collect all the stars across these worlds and levels.

Sounds a little too easy, right? The catch with this game is that as the levels progress, the obstacles get harder and more complex. Some even appear and disappear out of nowhere. The player can choose the level of difficulty and with the new expanding features, they can even design their own levels.

The player’s goal in this game is to understand the layout of every level, be aware of all the obstacles and traps, and accordingly plan how to collect all the stars and reach the next level. This game keeps the player on their toes and requires them to be aware of their surroundings and how they’ll impact the ball at all times. They have to carefully take all the situational factors into account before strategizing about their next move.

App link: Playstore

4. Hidden Objects: Mystery Place

Hidden Objects: Mystery Place

The goal of this game is to find all the objects named in the list. Each level is set against a different and interesting background story with the objects carefully hidden in the most unsuspecting places.

With over 100,000 hidden objects and 25,000 levels, this mystery game takes the player on a journey to unique destinations and new places every time. The player has the option of taking hints if they feel stuck. The motive is to find all the objects on the list and solve the mystery before time runs out. This game can be played offline as well.

Finding objects hidden in various nooks and corners and sometimes just in plain sight requires an individual to carefully assess their surroundings. This game makes the individual adept at taking clues from the situation as well as being acutely aware of one’s physical surroundings, both necessary components of being situationally aware.

App link: Playstore | Appstore

5. Medito: Meditation and Sleep

Medito: Meditation and Sleep

Medito is a not-for-profit organization that has developed a meditation app that helps you cope with unpleasant emotional states like stress and anxiety and improves general well-being. It has beginner and intermediate-level courses depending on how experienced and advanced you are with meditation. It also has meditations and exercises available for various purposes like improving sleep, de-stressing, etc.

Meditation can be a useful tool in helping individuals step out of their emotionally heightened state. Once the person is feeling more grounded, they can also focus better and be more aware of their surroundings and their happenings.

App link Appstore

6. Jigsaw Puzzles

Jigsaw Puzzles

In this two-in-one game, the player has to first solve the block puzzle to get to the jigsaw pieces. Solving one block puzzle = finding one jigsaw piece.

Once the player has found enough pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, they can start solving that. The more you solve, the more pieces you keep finding to connect together and complete the beautiful picture.

Jigsaw and block puzzles require the individual to be concurrently aware of the puzzle as well the pieces available with them. They have to be mindful of what piece will best fit in what surroundings and have to make premeditated moves. This helps in increasing the individual’s situational awareness about various things in their surroundings and how they can be used to reach the desired result.

App link: Playstore

Other ways to boost situational awareness

Situational awareness is a skill that can be enhanced and worked upon. Hence, engaging in some books, along with other tools and strategies can help individuals, especially kids manifolds. Here are a few ways one can work on situational awareness abilities.

1. Practicing Mindfulness

This can be done using the simple 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique that brings attention back to the present moment and environment.

Being fully present in the moment can have various benefits. It can boost focus and increase awareness of the current situation and how it needs to be acted upon. It can also bring to light factors affecting the situation that are not otherwise obvious. 

2. Plan it out

It could be useful to employ various techniques like tools, charts, prioritizing, listing, and color coding in complex situations. These can help in getting deeper insights into the situation and the factors affecting it.

Getting things out on paper or a screen can help facilitate planning the best course of action. It can help take into account the numerous factors and map out what needs to be done, when, and how. This technique can be useful in overstimulating, high-risk, and/or complex decision-making situations.

3. Use your imagination

Keep yourself on your toes by imagining various hypothetical scenarios. When you devise a plan, consider the different outcomes it could lead to. Taking the role of situational factors into account can help reveal the possibilities for improvement.

Also, considering if you are physically and psychologically prepared to meet any and every demand the situation might have from you can aid in increasing awareness and the efficiency of dealing with the environment.

Conclusion

Situational awareness is an extremely useful skill that can and should be learned and polished. However, one should be extremely motivated to boost these skills. For this, some interesting quotes can be used to inspire individuals to grasp and be more aware of their surroundings.

Being aware of the ongoings in the environment and the consequences they can have for you and others is an important tool that can improve everyday life quality and decision-making. Information about your situation can not only make but also save lives.

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