Edutainment is a mix of education and entertainment. It seems that these days a lot of games are falling into this category. From running a diner and learning time and management skills with game like Cooking Dash, to games with focus at improving various aspects of intelligence such as memory, mathematics, analysis, and more, the growing number of edutainment titles are pouring into the market.

Brain My Day is one such title that has entered into the mix. Featuring 28 mini games and 4 game modes, this collection of mini games aims to sharpen your cranium. Sounds like a plan, but is it any fun? Or is it a dud that’ll give me a headache? Join us as we Brain My Day here on Just Another Mobile Monday.

Installation and Registration

Brain My Day was easily installed using ActiveSync. From downloading to installing it took about 3 minutes – pretty easy I’ll have to say! Registration couldn’t be easier – the first time you open the game, it will ask you for a serial number. If you don’t enter one, you’ll get 35 demo minutes of game.

Playing the Game

The game’s hefty requirements for 20MB of free system RAM caused me to have to revert my Dell Axim x51v to the dark ages disabling all my Today Screen add-ons as well as pretty much everything else – we’ll see if it was worth all this trouble for just a single game. As soon as the game is first started, you’ll be asked to create a user profile and your avatar. There are a number of customizations you can do to make your character from a moderate selection of hair, glasses, and moustache choices. In my case, I tried to make mine look as close to myself as possible – YAY! I’m a cartoon! I’m a cartoon!

After creating your avatar, you enter into your piece of property (above) where you’ll see your plain old house next to the lake. The indicators below are your resources – brain crystals and money. Brain crystals are earned by doing well in the various challenges. They serve as the only means to purchase plants such as shrubs, bushes, and trees which provide you with much needed cash flow to buy furnishings for your property – from upgrading your house to buying a helicopter. Below you’ll see my precious real estate after beating a number of challenges.

This is a game within a game which is fantastic! Granted there are awards to be earned and games unlocked, but being able to build and upgrade your property is a medallion award in itself. One of the more unique aspects is the concept of game time. It takes time for your produce to grow and this game has a pseudo-real time element to it where it calculates growth of money from the last time you played. So, if that happened to be 3 weeks ago, you’ll get money for 3 weeks worth of time. However, be warned, that money can only buy so much as it’s the vegetation and trees that make your property spruced up – and those can only be obtained by earning your brain crystals fair and square.

Alright! Now that we’ve talked about the building aspect of the game, let’s go to the main event – the brain games! Games are separated into 4 categories – Memory, Identifity, Analize, and Math…let’s just say that they could also use a class in spelling.

As Doug Goldring so aptly put:

Where most of the games in this genre focus more on the training, Brain My day focuses on the game aspects, with the belief that brain training games should be at least as entertaining as any other genre. So, to meet this goal, when Pocket More Games designed Brain My Day, they threw out the static images, threw out abstract color balls, and created, “a realistic interactive world,” which you can use to train your brain.

Starting the game out, you’ll have access to 16 of the 28 fun mini games. Let’s take a look at a few of my favorite ones….

Memory Games

People’s Faces – There are a number of memory games in the package, but this one I find to be quite fun. A character shows him or herself for about 3 seconds and you’ll need to be able to identify that character out of 4 different choices.

Remember Sequence- The various balls will explode in a certain sequence. Remember the sequence and pop them in the proper order. Wow! The explosions are certainly eye candy.

Memorizing Scenes – I hope you were paying attention! Much like Chef Gordon Ramsay’s challenge in Hell’s Kitchen with proper dining room table setup, you’ll need to remember exactly where each piece is supposed to go. There are other scenes than just the chess board….

Analysis Games

3D Shapes – This one was amazing as the little shapes created by the little lights were rotating and moving. You’ll need to look carefully and watch all sides before choosing which you think is the same – sometimes they are easy, but sometimes they are a challenge!

Finding Numbers – Oh boy…this one was a doozy! To date, I have lost on this game the most as I fail to see in the picture where all the numbers are. For example, see the cobra in the picture above? Yes, that’s the number "2" hidden in there. And here’s the catch that makes it so hard – tap in the wrong spot where there is no number and you’ve lost the challenge….bummer.

Spotting the Difference – If you thought that 3D Shapes was easy, this one makes it a lot harder. Depending on the level, the differences can be minute and all 4 scenes are actually moving so it’s like watching 4 televisions and trying to see what’s the difference. To make matters even harder, the clips of the 4 scenes may have started at different times.

Identify Games

Count Things – Think you are a Fenton Crackshell (GizmoDuck)? Try counting the objects – though it’s not as easy as it looks because in the real game, all the butterflies or objects are moving erratically and in different orbits.

Find a Toy – This mini-game is almost as hard as Finding Numbers but a list is not provided this time. You’ll need to use your brain and decide what to look for (in this case any sea vehicles) – tapping the incorrect item will cause you to fail the challenge.

Math Games

Connect Numbers – In this challenge, you have to connect the numbers to make 17. Don’t worry, it’s not timed (unless you have picked time challenge [see below in "Game Modes"])…but it sure makes you think!

Safe Cracker – In Safe Cracker you have to be good with your numbers. Make the 2 equations equal and you’ll get the loot! This specific game is excellent and in the harder levels very challenging.

Two Castles - Can you keep track of the skeletons? How many go into the blue castle and how many go into the red castle? Oh, I forgot the third choice – how many don’t go into any castle? Well, obviously I can’t remember….I’ll need to work on this a lot more.

Game Modes

There are really only 2 different modes of play. Complete test gives you a a full helping of exercises with games from every category. Single Category and Single Game is self explanatory, but the Time Challenge is certainly an idea that would make even Einstein proud! It’s a "time attack" of your brain where you get 90 seconds to rack your brains for as many points as your neurons can nab.

Conclusion

Mesmerizing and delightful, Brain a Day certainly delivers cranial gymnastics in a eye catching, wonderfully animated, multi-level package where you play games within games thereby creating your own trophy. Providing rewards to those who play with additional games as well as merit badges, this brain game is sure to take your brain away from the daily grind…it’s so much fun, you won’t even know your grey matter is exercising. So, with that said, I’m donning on my thinking cap and going back to Brain Away with Brain My Day – headaches not included. So was it worth the 20 MB hassle? We’ll let you decide!

Vital Statistics

Name: Brain My Day
Version: 1.0
Platform: WM 2003 / WM5 / WM6 Pocket PC
Developer: More Games Entertainment
Available From: More Games Entertainment, Pocket Gear
Price: $19.95
Trial: Yes – 35 Minutes
Device Used for Review: Dell Axim X51v

Technorati Tags: Reviews, Windows Mobile Reviews, More Games Entertainment, Brain My Day, Pocket PC, PPC, Windows Mobile, WM, Tjchan, Just Another Mobile Monday, JAMM

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

Related posts:

1. Review: Give your brain a workout with Brain School!
2. Resco brain Games at CFDotCom
3. Don Your Thinking Cap And Get Ready For Brain My Day From Pocket More Games
4. Contest: Time to Train Your Brain — The (un)Official JAMM Brain School Quiz
5. Spb Software House Release Brain Evolution for Smartphone