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German has two everyday past tenses, and learners often mix them up. These free games and clear explanations help you build the right Perfekt forms (ich habe gemacht / ich bin gegangen) and recognize Präteritum (ich machte) when reading or listening.
As a broad tendency, Perfekt is the past tense of everyday conversation across the German-speaking world, and it is especially dominant in the south; region, register and verb choice all shift the picture. It's a two-part form: an auxiliary (haben or sein) plus the past participle (ge-mach-t, ge-gang-en). Most verbs take haben. Sein appears with intransitive verbs describing a change of location or state (gehen, kommen, fahren, werden, einschlafen) plus the lexical exceptions sein and bleiben - and note that fahren takes haben when it has a direct object (ich habe das Auto gefahren).
Präteritum (the simple past - ich machte, ich ging) is mostly at home in writing: books, news and formal texts. It also turns up in northern speech somewhat more often than in southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland, so treat the spoken/written split as a tendency rather than a rule. The exception everywhere: a small set of high-frequency verbs (sein, haben, werden, modal verbs like können, müssen, wollen) are commonly used in Präteritum even in speech (ich war, ich hatte, ich konnte).
Building the Perfekt right is more important than memorising every Präteritum form, because Perfekt is what you'll use when speaking. Drilling participle forms - especially the irregular ones - is one of the highest-leverage things you can do at A2/B1.
As a rough guide, Perfekt (ich habe gemacht / ich bin gegangen) dominates everyday speech, while Präteritum (ich machte / ich ging) is mostly written - books, news, formal writing. sein, haben, werden and the modal verbs use Präteritum in conversation too (ich war, ich hatte, ich konnte). Region and register shift the balance, so listen to how people around you speak.
Most verbs take haben. Sein goes with intransitive verbs that describe a change of location (gehen, kommen, fliegen, laufen, reisen) or a change of state (werden, sterben, einschlafen, aufwachen), plus the exceptions sein and bleiben. Watch the transitive cases: ich bin nach Berlin gefahren but ich habe das Auto gefahren.
Drill them in small batches by pattern. Regular weak verbs follow ge- + stem + -t (machen → gemacht). Strong verbs are the ones with distinctive principal parts (singen - sang - gesungen), usually ending in -en. Mixed verbs combine both (denken → gedacht). Plenty of short reps generally stick better than reading lists.