Software Spotlight: SPB Brain Evolution
Software Spotlight is a series that will be debuting on MaemoMagazine.com that will take a detailed look at exceptional community and/or commercial software available for Maemo-based devices.
This week we will be taking a look at SPB Brain Evolution by SPB Software.
Brain Evolution bills itself as:
…an intellectual software game that helps to train the brain and improve memory, logic, arithmetic, and puzzle-solving skills. The application is a suit of 12 games, which have to be played in sequence: only good results in a game, unlock the next one.
Sounds more like a mental marathon than a game, but let’s see how it plays.
After launching the game you are presented with this menacing screen:
Clicking “Next” will ask for your game-name (this is what will appear in high-score lists and such). Continuing on, your current “Brain Status” will be determined by playing five simple games. It appears that doing this allows you to know where you are before doing any training. I was at the “Schoolboy” level.
Once you are finished with brain marking, you can go on to brain training. Brain training allows you to have some fun playing (and getting better at) the games themselves, which will unlock other games.
At first you are allowed to play four games: Arithmetic, Quadronica, Sudoku, and Memorics; while the other 8 are locked away, only to be rewarded after brain progress has been made! Starting off, brain training consists of playing two different games, but this number goes up as you unlock more. When brain training is complete, you are presented with an interesting fact, while the difficulty of an unlocked game or the unlocking of a new game may also happen (depending on how well you have done).
A Look at the Games Themselves:
The first game in the list is called “Arithmetic” and, as the name suggests, tests your ability to do simple computational mathematics.
The game itself is timed — the faster you are and fewer wrong answers entered, the higher the score achieved. Like all the games, Arithmetic has levels of difficulty. You start out at “easy” which tests only addition and subtraction, and can work your way up until multiplication and division are introduced.
The second game, titled Quadronica, is also very simple, but so far my favorite (however, I still haven’t unlocked them all yet). It is based on the simple principle of finding same-colored blocks which form a rectangle. The larger the area the rectangle forms, the more points awarded.
The amount of time given is limited, so it a race to find the most and largest quads formed. Advancing in difficulty adds more block colors.
The ultra-popular puzzle game, Sudoku, is third on the list, and as always, provides some entertaining gameplay. This version of Sudoku is fairly bare-bones, but fortunately does provide pencilmarks.
The score you receive is based on how fast you can finish. Advancing in difficulty reduces the amount of given numbers and makes the placements more difficult.
The fourth and final base-unlocked game is Memorics. This game will put your short-term memory to the test by having you remember a field, then asking you a feature of that field.
You only have a fixed amount of time to memorize the field, and higher scores are achieved with more accurate answers. As it advances in difficulty, more shapes, colors, states and objects are added to the field. This is another extremely fun game that can provide quite a challenge to the player.
Games that are locked at first are: Pairs, Numbers, Balltracker, Guess Who, Minesweeper, Geometry, Encyclopedia, and Matches. I will leave it up to your hard work to find out about these games.
The game also features online high score lists that you can publish-to and read-from. I found myself repeatedly trying to outdo myself and others on the high score lists.
This really adds a fun factor to the game. Another cool feature that you may have noticed from the screenshots is that the game runs entirely in portrait mode.
Summary:
All-in-all, I really enjoyed Brain Evolution by SPB Software. It packs a whole ton of fun games into a small package, and that is very welcome for a platform that is starving for some quality gameplay.
Pricing and Availability:
SPB Brain Evolution is available from the OVI Store for Free, so there is nothing stopping you from giving this a go on your N900. And who knows, after playing, you might just get a little smarter as well — or at least use that as a great excuse.
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