I had a similar idea to teach physics, well mostly scientific thinking and process by using a physics game engine for our world or some esoteric one and then asking them to perform some actions by creating theories of how the system behaves. Moving from a qualitative analysis of the system to building concrete quantitative theories and then in later stages having their simple theories fail as we deal with more complex interactions with the system and having them adapt their models of this world or rethink another.

Imagine how much their thought process would change if they intimately understood how scientific modelling works.