BRAIN IT – Amazing Adventure is an interesting little mobile puzzler from Sleepless Clinic. The game is available for iOS and Android for $1.99. The aesthetic is cute but the puzzles are strange.
An evil robot is attacking your planet. It’s up to you, a little brain-o-bot, to stop the evil robot’s machine of destruction, saving your planet. Of course, to save the world you’ll have to solve puzzles.
The minimalist and colorful art style of the game is adorable. The accompanying music is pleasant and uplifting. The game has a simplistic story told through comic style panels that lets the player get right to the puzzles.
Each puzzle consists of getting a door on the other side of a room to open so that you can proceed to the next level and get closer to disabling the evil robot. Players have a certain amount of time to finish these puzzles before they fail and blow up. However, the amount of time given for each level is generous, and if you fail you can painlessly start the level over again.
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Solving puzzles feels a bit like an old-school point-and-click adventure game. Tapping on different objects, some of which may just look like part of the background, will manipulate them and move objects around to solve the puzzle and open the door. While some puzzles’ solutions are obvious, others are difficult to figure out and the solutions are seemingly random.
Each level has a completely different puzzle so there aren’t any skills or tools to master as you solve more challenging puzzles throughout the game. BRAIN IT is described as “a set of twisted mind games with a lot of brain teasers consisting in solving surprising and unconventional brain puzzles,” and I suppose that’s true. The puzzles are unconventional but that’s because they are so random and there’s inconsistent logic used in solving them.
There’s no tutorial to tell you what to do so players are left to tap away at the screen with the timer ticking down, trying to figure out what's happening. Even a “hot or cold” indicator to tell you if you're getting close to the solution would be nice to help players figure out what they’re supposed to be doing. The facial expression of your little brain-o-bot changes while it waits for you to open the door and it seems like a missed opportunity that he doesn’t smile when you are doing the right thing and frown when you're not.
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The touch controls work well for the game, and the music and art for the game are adorable. The puzzles, however, leave something to be desired as there isn’t really much using your brain to figure them out. Some of the levels players can solve by tapping and dragging things around randomly, never realizing what they did to get the door open.
It seems like maybe BRAIN IT – Amazing Adventure wasn’t quite ready to be released. The game has a solid idea but the puzzles need some fine tuning.
This game was obtained from the developer and reviewed on a Samsung Galaxy S4.
Review Summary
Pros
- Well presented
Cons
- Puzzles leave a lot to be desired