Think back to the last time you played a game. Was it a boisterous family game night with a board game like Ticket to Ride? A nostalgic weekend exploring the Oblivion remaster? A few hurried rounds of Wordle while pacing a hospital room?

Now consider who made that game. What do you know about the hardworking coders, designers, composers, writers, and voice actors who made those small moments of joy possible?

For Christian parents especially, it can be helpful to know a bit about the makers of games, just as it’s helpful to know about a filmmaker or TV series developer. What artists make often reflects their values.

This isn’t to say Christians should only play games made by Christians. But if you’re looking for quality, entertaining games made by Christians, they exist. I’d like to introduce you to a few of them and encourage you to give them a try along with your friends and family.

1. Bug & Seek

Some scoundrel has broken into Buggburg’s beloved bug zoo (the Insectarium) and stolen all the bugs! In Bug & Seek, your character must recapture the insects and reopen the zoo.

Bug & Seek is what’s known as a “cozy” video game. As you play, your main goal is to rebuild the Insectarium. But you also have time to chat with the citizens of Buggburg, explore the countryside, and solve the game’s mystery in a leisurely fashion. And with more than 200 real-life bugs to catch, you’ll also brush up on your entomology.

This lighthearted bug-catching simulator is the work of a husband-and-wife team, Chera and Craig Meredith. When burnout signaled the end of Craig’s time as an attorney, their family began praying about what might come next. They’d just moved to a house in the rambling woods of Tennessee, and exploring the local bug life became a favorite pastime for them and their two children. They became inspired: What if their love of gaming and their love of God’s creation could combine?

“We hope it’s relaxing and peaceful for people, but also gives them an appreciation and respect for nature and especially insects,” Craig told me. “Seeing the immense variety and creativity of God in the insect world really opened my eyes [to] how interesting insects are and what they reflect about our Creator.”

2. Deliverance

Would you like to slay demons by the righteous power of God, as an angel? That’s the story of the board game Deliverance. The village of Fallbrook is under demonic attack, and it’s up to you and your fellow angels to fend off the forces of darkness. In this cooperative board game, each player controls a different angel, and your team must work together to overcome the devilish legions assailing the saints.

Deliverance’s creator, Andrew Lowen, had long enjoyed playing games before diving into development himself. He was especially fond of fantasy adventure games, but he grew frustrated that none of the game worlds cohered with a Christian cosmology.

“I just got mad at God one day,” Lowen recounted to me, “and said, ‘Why doesn’t a game like this exist?!’ And at the time I didn’t realize it, but I was saying, ‘Here am I, send me.’”

“The intent of my game is to refresh the heart of the saints,” Lowen explained. But non-Christians make up about half of his fans. He’s created a game that allows non-Christians to explore the wild world of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection, no matter what they believe. Some of his favorite feedback has come from non-Christians with comments like, “Andrew, there is no God. But this game is sick!”

3. Legion TD 2

Legion TD 2 allows players to face off in a combination of chess and poker set in a fantasy landscape. “TD” stands for “tower defense,” and each team defends its king, managing resources and launching attacks against its opponents. Last king standing wins!

The intent of my game is to refresh the heart of the saints.

Legion TD 2 is the successor to an older video game. Brent Batas single-handedly built Legion TD in high school as a “mod,” or modification, of the fantasy game Warcraft III. Several years after releasing Legion TD, Batas observed the success of other mods-turned-games and decided to grow his game in a similar direction. Today, Legion TD 2 is run by a small team of full-time developers and a host of contractors, all working to keep the game running smoothly for players logging on from more than 100 countries around the world.

For Batas, the enjoyment he brings his players is ample reward for the often grueling work of building and maintaining a real-time game. “That feeling of creating an experience for people and seeing it bring them joy, it’s like the best feeling in the world to me,” he explained to me. “I think I’m experiencing a small, small taste of what God maybe feels like when we actually enjoy his creation and live our lives the way he intended.”

4. Sainthood

How do you meditate on the Great Commandment (Matt. 22:34–40)? Prayer? Song? Study? Now, you can also do it with a video game.

In Sainthood, your character lands on an island off the coast of the kingdom of Kongo. This real-life country (which no longer exists) was evangelized by Portuguese missionaries around the 15th century and became a Christian nation. Your duties are simple and (for Christians) familiar: Serve your community and grow your faith.

This cozy strategy game requires you to balance two resources (time and energy) in the pursuit of your two goals (faith and charity). You spend your 33(!) days on the island volunteering in the community, praying, attending church services, and learning about real-world church history.

Catholic cathedrals were a key inspiration for Bisong Taiwo in creating Sainthood. These structures draw millions of fascinated visitors every year, most of them non-Christians “drawn to these great works of art because they are just beautiful in and of themselves,” Taiwo told me. Similarly, he hopes his game will soften players’ hearts toward the gospel. The game’s success gives him reason for hope.

Sainthood boasts a 97 percent positive rating on Steam (a popular gaming platform), and approving comments from non-Christians are common: “If you’re not religious, like me, you still have a nice time management strategy game with no violence and a message of caring for others, which I think we can all use a little bit of.”

5. The Lost Legends of Redwall: The Scout

Author Brian Jacques’s popular Redwall series is set in a world of woodland creatures. Brave mice, treacherous weasels, raucous otters, doughty hares, and bloodthirsty stoats populate the lands surrounding the Mossflower Woods. In the first book, evil rat Cluny the Scourge lays siege to the gentle creatures of Redwall Abbey, who must defend their home.

The Scout—which takes place a few months before Cluny arrives at the abbey—is the first-ever official Redwall video game. You play as a young mouse from the village of Lillygrove, one of the outlying communities first hit by Cluny’s invasion. The game doesn’t feature combat but instead sends you through a series of stealth challenges and puzzles to rescue your loved ones and sound the alarm at Redwall Abbey.

The Scout is the work of Soma Games, a Christian game company that aims to serve the world as “the C. S. Lewis of video games,” creating aesthetically beautiful and thematically rich gaming experiences that draw all who play them to consider and appreciate eternal things. Soma founder and COO Chris Skaggs told me how the world of Redwall fits within this mission: “The vibe, the feel, the ethos of Redwall is all about abundance and love and fellowship. . . . It’s a very Christian book at its heart, even if it doesn’t have Christ in person.”

Skaggs also established Imladris, a community of Christians working in and around the gaming world. This “community of redemptive gaming industry pros” is laboring to empower and equip Christians in the gaming industry to pursue their craft in a way that glorifies God and bids his kingdom come, whether they’re quietly coding a hobby game or employed at a major gaming company.

The work isn’t easy, and Skaggs and his community long for the day when fellow Christians appreciate the redemptive value of games the same way C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien inspired us to appreciate fantasy and science fiction. “I would want my faith community to understand that we’re doing something really cool,” Skaggs said. “[It’s] a valid art form that is going to change hearts and minds and lead people in beautiful ways to Christ.”