Smarter Brain Trainer

Smarter Brain Trainer is a sequel to Mindscape's Brain Trainer and Mindscape's Bigger Brain Trainer. As with the previous titles the claim is that ”Spending a few minutes each day on a mental workout can improve your brainpower”, this title five levels of difficulty and presents the following fifteen activities grouped into five categories each with three games apiece. All games can be played in Practice Mode but the intention is that players will take a daily test which will present the player with a set of puzzles that will test and expand their mental faculties. The puzzles are:* Verbal: which contains: + Code Word: in the simplest level the player is shown a grid in which each letter of the alphabet is numbered, beneath that is a series of numbers which, when decoded spell a word. The objective is to enter the word.
On the hardest level the player is given a series of letters and must perform a calculation to find the decoded letter; for example if given the letter ‘D’ and the instruction ‘adjust by -7’ they find ‘D’ in the grid, take the corresponding number of 26, adjust by -7 to get 19, scan the grid for the number 19 and enter the corresponding letter.

+ Stroop: gere the player is presented with a series of coloured squares above which is displayed a colour word and all the player has to do is click on the correct square, so if the word is ‘Red’ then they must click on the red square. Sounds easy – well it is but the word is coloured too and when the word ‘Red’ appears in green text it is very easy to click on the green square

+ Wordex: here the player is presented with a 3x3 grid with a letter in each cell. The object is to make a specified number of words within the time limit. On the easy setting the player has to find five words, on the hardest they must find twenty-five

• Numerical: which contains:

  • Correct Change: the player is shown a European banknote and is given an amount, all they have to do is provide the correct change by clicking on Euro coins.

  • Bingo: the player is given a bingo card with fifteen numbers but instead of crossing off numbers when they are called the player is presented with a sum the answer to which is the number to be crossed off. As the difficulty increases so does the difficulty of the sums.

  • Maths Pairs: this game is played out on a grid on which are numerical expressions such as 0.725, 3/50, 11/40 etc. The players task is to click on the two pairs that equate to the same value. As the difficulty increases the size of the grid and the harder the sums increase too

• Spatial:

  • SpiderWeb: in the centre of an eight stranded web sits a spider, flies crawl down each of the strands but are destroyed when the spider turns to face them. The player has to survive three minutes pressing the numbers one to eight to fend off the attacking flies

  • Symbol Block: the game screen is filled with random symbols onto which is placed a shaded shape. Using the mouse the player has to move the shape into a position where it covers only unique symbols. As the difficulty increases the shaded shape changes and the number of symbols increases

  • Dodger: a game where the player has to catch green blocks while avoiding orange ones

• Memory games

  • Number Recall: the player is shown a number for one second and must then enter it correctly, as the level of difficulty increases so does the length of the number.

  • Stepping Stones: this is similar to a Simon Says game. The player is shown a number of boxes with numbers in them, they must memorize the numbers and when they disappear the player has to click on the boxes in numerical order

  • What’s In The Box: in the centre of the screen there’s a box. Symbols slide in from the left and slide out from the right but not all the symbols that go in come out. When the in/out sequence has completed the player is presented with a symbol pick list and has to select those that are still in the box.

• Logic Games;

  • Boxes: the game area is filled with a number of overlapping rectangles. The player’s objective is to identify all the rectangles formed by these shapes.>+ Linker: pairs of coloured blocks placed on a grid and the player must join them up without crossing the connection lines

  • Pathfinder: presented with a number of connected dots the player must find a way to traverse all connections using each line only once, as the difficulty level increases so does the complexity of the pattern of dots and their interconnections.