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Best Brain Game Games

These are games that exercise your knowledge, recall and memorisation in different ways. Working with numbers, guessing words, remembering trivia, the joy of these games is that they get your grey matter working.

Recently popularised by the Big Brain Academy and Brain Training games, they not only offer an educational experience but a way to interact with games to solve problems and more the story forward.

Genre Details

Era: 1948 - 2023
Total Games: 461
Total Likes: 2,570

Wordle

Release Date: 20/12/2021

Platforms: Web

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, Grid and Text

Wordle is a daily puzzle game where you (and anyone else playing that day) try and guess the secret word. You get six guesses that must be real words. Each letter is then coloured to provide clues: green for right letter in the right place, yellow for...

Sticky Terms

Release Date: 01/03/2020

Platforms: Android and iOS

Components: 2D Side-On and Text

Sticky Terms is a puzzle game where you construct words from other languages with portions of letters. You rotate, drag and overlap the different elements to create words, once you do you are rewarded with a drum hit and a definition of the word.

Conduct Together

Conduct Together (Series)

Release Date: 06/12/2018

Platforms: Android, Mac, PC, Switch and iOS

Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead and Cartoon

Conduct Together is a strategy game where you control toy trains along the overlapping train tracks. Each train can be started and stopped with a specific button. Other buttons change different points. The aim is to transport the people from one station...

Overboard

Release Date: 02/06/2021

Platforms: Android, PC, Switch and iOS

Skill Rating: 13+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On, Hand-Made and Text

Overboard is a murder mystery narrative game played in reverse. You murder your husband at the start of the game and then try and get away with it. It's played on a ship where the characters are affected by your choices and change their actions...

Dordogne

Release Date: Coming soon

Platforms: PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S

Skill Rating: 6+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person and Hand-Made

Dordogne is a narrative adventure where you play as Mimi, a 32-year-old woman who returns to the house of her recently deceased grandmother. You explore the house and area to find letters and puzzles that bring back memories of the past.

Threes

Release Date: 06/02/2014

Platforms: Amazon Fire, Android, Web and iOS

Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On

Threes is a puzzle game where you slide numbered tiles on a grid. When they collide they combine their numbers, like Triple Town. You can match 1's and 2's with each other, the white tiles can match cards that are multiples of 3...

Hidden in Plain Sight

Release Date: 16/07/2014, updated in 2020

Platforms: Mac, PC, Switch, Xbox 360 and Xbox One

Components: 2D Overhead and Pixels

Hidden in Plain Sight is a unique battle that requires keen observation rather than quick reflexes. Up to four players fight to protect or assassinate the king, catch a thief or race across the screen without being stopped. The twist is that you each...

Ghost Trick

Release Date: 19/06/2010, updated in 2023

Platforms: DS, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One and iOS

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On and Pixels

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is a game where you play a ghost that can stop time to solve crimes and save lives. You can inhabit and control objects and possess corpses to alter what happens. His ultimate aim is to use his memories to find out how he...

Cris Tales

Release Date: 20/07/2021

Platforms: PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Switch and Xbox One

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On and Hand-Made

Cris Tales is a role-playing game where you see how your actions in the present affect the past and future. You play as Crisbell in a cartoon-looking adventure through four Kingdoms in a bid to stop the powerful Time Empress and rewrite the future of...

ElecHead

Release Date: 14/10/2021, updated in 2022

Platforms: PC and Switch

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On and Pixels

ElecHead is a running and jumping puzzle game where you control a character who is a source of electricity. With this power you activate the platforms you need to progress in unusual and puzzling ways. It introduces unique scenarios where you need to...

MicroMacro: Crime City

Release Date: 01/01/2020, updated in 2021

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: Board and Cards

MicroMacro: Crime City is a puzzle brain game where you are solving crimes by discovering clues hidden in black and white pictures. You solve a series of cases that relate to different large pictures you lay out on the table between all the players. The...

Dixit

Release Date: 01/01/2008

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: Board, Cards, Figures and Tokens

Dixit is a communication game where you guess which Picture cards are related to someone's clue. Each round you each pick a card to match the Storyteller player's clue and then try and guess which one was the Storyteller's. It's clever because of the...

Exploding Kittens

Release Date: 01/01/2015

Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds

Components: Cards

Exploding Kittens is a push-your-luck card game like Russian Roulette but with adorable kittens rather than bullets. You take turns to draw cards until you get the Exploding Kitten card and lose. The twist is the various comical and cunning ways you can...

Qwirkle

Release Date: 01/01/2006

Skill Rating: 5+ year-olds

Components: Placeables

Qwirkle is an abstract sequencing puzzle game where you compete to create rows of matching (or series of) colours and shapes. You score more points by matching multiple directions, but need to be careful not to leave points for other players to...

Bananagrams

Release Date: 01/01/2006

Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds

Components: Bag and Tokens

Bananagrams is a brain game where you arrange and rearrange letters to make words. You play by taking Letter tiles from a shared pile and organising them into a crossword grid. It is a game of speed, quick adaptation and that glorious feeling of joy...

Henry Halfhead

Release Date: Coming soon

Platforms: PC

Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person and Cartoon

Henry Halfhead is a traversal game where you move around by possessing and controlling any object within your reach. You move around the world freely, but to get where you need to go you need to become the objects around you to use their abilities. It...

Tsuro

Release Date: 01/01/2005

Skill Rating: 6+ year-olds

Components: Board, Figures and Placeables

Tsuro is a strategic tile-laying traversal game where the goal is to keep your piece on the board longer than anyone else. You play by adding intricate winding Path tiles to a board to move pieces along the path that you create. It is a game of cat and...

Inscryption

Release Date: 19/10/2021, updated in 2022

Platforms: Mac, PC, PS4, PS5 and Switch

Components: 2D Overhead, Cards and Hand-Made

Inscryption starts as a card-based adventure where you build a deck of cards to take on adventures and battles. To this, it adds escape-room style puzzles, both in the card game and in the room in which you are playing. The result is a psychological...

Baba is You

Release Date: 13/03/2019

Platforms: Mac, PC and Switch

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On and Pixels

Baba is You requires some lateral thinking. Each level is controlled by rules written on the screen, such as ‘Lava is Hot’, ‘Wall is Stop’ and ‘Flag is Move’. By moving the words around with your pixelated character, you subvert the...

Do Not Feed the Monkeys

Release Date: 23/10/2018

Platforms: Android, Mac, PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One

Components: 2D Side-On

Do Not Feed the Monkeys is an adventure game where you sit at a computer and spy on live video feeds of various events and characters. Your job is to gather information about "the monkeys" while also looking after your character's health and apartment...

World of Goo

Release Date: 13/10/2008, updated in 2017

Platforms: Android, Mac, PC, Switch, Wii, Wii U and iOS

Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On and Cartoon

World of Goo is a puzzle game where you use balls of goo to create bridges that span increasingly large chasms and obstacles. The game simulates real-world physics to determine if structures are strong enough and when they collapse. This means that...

A Monsters Expedition

Release Date: 10/09/2020

Platforms: Apple TV, Mac, PC, PS4, PS5 and iOS

Skill Rating: 6+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, Grid and Hand-Made

A Monsters Expedition is a puzzle game where a monster finds creatures on an island and learns about the history of humanity. The puzzle is how to get from one island to the next.

Orwell: Keeping an Eye On You

Release Date: 27/10/2016

Platforms: Android, Mac, PC and iOS

Components: 2D Side-On and Text

Orwell is narrative game where you play a fictional research using a surveillance program called Orwell. Through a series of episodes you are tasked with using Orwell to help solve mysteries like the bombing of a public plaza. To do this you trawl...

868-Hack

Release Date: 30/08/2013, updated in 2017

Platforms: Mac, PC and iOS

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, Grid and Pixels

868-HACK is a puzzle game where you hack a computer program to collect as much data as you can. It's a unique puzzle as collecting data triggers more enemies to appear so you walk a delicate balance between collecting as much as possible, but not so...

Immortality

Release Date: 30/08/2022, updated in 2022

Platforms: Android, Mac, PC, Xbox Series X|S and iOS

Components: 2D Side-On and Filmed

Immortality is a mystery horror game where you investigate the lost movies of Marissa Marcel to unravel the mystery of her disappearance. As you paw through the footage, you uncover a story that spans three decades in unnerving and horrific ways. It's...

Opus Magnum

Release Date: 08/12/2017

Platforms: PC

Components: 2D Side-On

Opus Magnum is a puzzle game about assembling machines to convert spherical chemicals into different compounds. Each challenge can be tackled by creating different machine configurations, and each is awarded points on how compact, quick and efficient...

Elsinore

Release Date: 22/07/2019

Platforms: Mac and PC

Components: 2D Overhead and Cartoon

Elsinore is a mystery-adventure set in Shakespeare's Hamlet. You play Elsinore who repeats the same four days as she tries to find a way to avoid the tragedy that lies before her.

Corrypt

Release Date: 18/12/2012, updated in 2017

Platforms: Mac, PC and iOS

Skill Rating: 11+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, Grid and Pixels

Corrypt is a role-playing puzzle game where you collect items and interact with characters in a maze filled with moveable boxes. In a novel twist, you can push and pull the boxes, but they stick to you, making it a challenge to move them out of the way...

Imbroglio

Release Date: 18/05/2016, updated in 2020

Platforms: iOS

Skill Rating: 13+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead and Grid

Imbroglio is a puzzle game where you take a character into a dungeon and progress by collecting stars. The twist is that combat is focused not only your abilities but the tile you are standing on when you attack. Although each character has different...

Just One

Release Date: 01/01/2018

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: Cards and Pen and Pad

Just One is a communication party game where you guess words based on one-word clues from the group. You work together to help the guesser by writing one-word clues on the wipeable easels. Unusually, if the clues are the same they are removed before the...

Pitfall Planet

Release Date: 02/05/2016, updated in 2019

Platforms: Mac, PC and Switch

Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead and Blocks

Pitfall Planet is a cooperative puzzle game that forces you to think outside the box as you collect gold, fight enemies and escape levels. It features challenging levels that mean that teamwork is central as you grapple, throw and create pathways...

Hidden Through Time

Release Date: 12/03/2020, updated in 2022

Platforms: Android, Mac, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One and iOS

Skill Rating: 6+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead and Hand-Made

Hidden Through Time is a spot the item game that also takes you on a journey through different time periods. You are tasked with finding specific items and must zoom, interact and uncover things to find each one.

Teach Your Monster To Read

Release Date: 10/03/2014, updated in 2020

Platforms: Amazon Fire, Android and iOS

Skill Rating: 3+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On

Teach Your Monster to Read is a game about phonics, letters and reading. Children create a monster for a journey through three games. The combination of colourful well-animated characters and proper reading learning is both fun and powerful.

Patrick's Parabox

Release Date: 29/03/2022

Platforms: Mac and PC

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead and Grid

Patrick's Parabox is a puzzle game where you move, and move through, boxes within boxes. Like a Russian doll, inside each box is another level that you can navigate to create a nested set of puzzles. It's an equally mind-bending and elegant experience...

Sniks

Release Date: 05/08/2020

Platforms: Android, Mac and iOS

Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On

Sniks is a puzzle game about guiding colourful worms to matching coloured fruit and food. Each level is a self contained arena with a number of snakes. Each snake can only consume fruit of a matching colour and they can't pass each other. It poses some...

Big Brain Academy: Brain vs. Brain

Big Brain Academy: Brain vs. Brain (Series)

Release Date: 05/06/2006, updated in 2021

Platforms: DS, Switch and Wii

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On

Big Brain Academy is a puzzle game designed to test and improve your mental capacity and well being. You are presented with an assortment of challenges designed to measure how smart your brain is. The focus is on fun rather than learning, and the Big...

Please, Touch The Artwork

Release Date: 26/01/2022

Platforms: Android, Mac, PC, Switch and iOS

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On and Grid

Please, Touch The Artwork is a puzzle game that tells a story with real abstract paintings. Unconventionally it asks, what would happen if we did touch the artwork in museums? The answer is revealed over three stories each focusing on a different...

Words For A Bird

Release Date: 04/06/2020

Platforms: Android and iOS

Skill Rating: 5+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On

Words For A Bird is a short adventure you play by completing sentences. You follow the story of a purple bird. Each sentence is completed with letters from the tree in which the bird sits, along with a clue tile in the middle of the screen.

Good Soduku

Release Date: 20/07/2020

Platforms: iOS

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On and Text

Good Soduku is the classic puzzle game but made more accessible by removing the leg work of counting and tracking which numbers have been used where.

Rabbids Coding

Release Date: 08/10/2019, updated in 2020

Platforms: Android, PC and iOS

Skill Rating: 4+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead and Grid

Rabbids Coding is an educational game where you use simple blocks of code to move a Rabbid and make it perform actions. It's designed as a simple way for younger children to begin to interact with code and understand how games work.

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How long to play:
User-generated content:	No
Accessibility features:	Yes

Controls
Gamepad:
Mouse And Keyboard:
Touchscreen:
Motion:	Motion Aiming Motion Pointing Motion Tilting Motion Gesture Motion Camera
Remap Controls:
Button Combinations:	Holding Down Buttons Optional Rapid Repeated Pressing Optional No Simultaneous Buttons
Controller Vibration:
Sensitivity:

Getting Started
Onboarding Before Play:
Assistance Getting Starting:	Tutorials Practice Area View Control Mapping Assistance With Controls Reaction-Time Not Critical Low Pressure Adjust Speed No Jump Scares
Assistance For Progressing:	Guaranteed Progress With God Mode Bank Progress With Frequent Checkpoints Assisted Progress With Boosts Assisted Progress With Hints Assisted Recall for Characters Assisted Recall for Narrative and Dialogue Save Progress Anytime

Reading
Reading Level:
Text Visibility:	Large Clear Text High Contrast Text
Subtitles:
Captions:
Voice Acted:

Navigation
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Visual
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Visual Distractions:
Audio Cues for Visual Events:
Narration for Visual Elements:
	Motion Sickness Friendly
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Play Without Sight:
Violence:

Audio
	Balance Audio Levels
Audio Events:
	Play Without Hearing

Communication
Player-to-Player Online Communication:
Online Communication Assistance:

Difficulty
Difficulty Options:	Simple and Full Version No Memorisation Advantage No Hidden Information No Deceit Advantage No Colour Advantage No Mathematics Advantage No Weighing Decisions

Getting Started
Assistance Getting Started:	Clear Manual Electronic Version of Manual Electronic Version of Manual for Screen Readers Getting Started Video Digital Version Reference Aid
Assistance Progressing:	Play Order Tokens (Or play order doesn’t change) Reaction-Time Not Critical Low Pressure Low Impact Catch Up Rule

Reading
Reading Level:
Necessary Text Visibility:	Large Clear Text on Board (Or no text required) Large Clear Text on Cards (Or no text required) High Contrast Text (Or no text required) QR Code For Text (Or no text required) Primary and Secondary Text Distinguishable (Or no text required) Information Orientation Clear Icons

Physical
Pieces:	Components are Distinguishable by Touch Components are Replaceable No Non-Standard Dice (Or No Dice) No Tiny Pieces No Paper Money No Sprawl
Cards:	Large Card Size Standard Card Shape Limited Hand Management No Excessive Card Shuffling No Right-Handed Advantage
Placement:	No Unbound Placement Player Components Not Shared No Fiddly Placement Easily Verbalised Actions

Visual
Printed Visibility:	Colour Blind Friendly Design Double-Coding Colour High Contrast Colours
Component Identifiability:	Outline Key Elements No Busy Backgrounds Easily Verbalised Game State No Close Inspection Disadvantage Playable Without Sight

Audio
Communication:	Audio Cues Mirrored Visually (Or no critical audio signals) No Pressured Reveals No Pressured Communication Playable Without Hearing

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Best Brain Game Games

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