Brain apart from the Switch’s other party games, aside from its less zany mini-games, is just how adjustable the difficulty is. It can get surprisingly intense when all the players in a room are trying to be the first to identify a slowly unraveling photo of a zebra.
To start, the games are pretty simple but with a nice progression, so they work well for a timed competition where you’re trying to solve problems as quickly as possible. (Though the game does rate the weight of your brain after tests.) Instead, the single-player feels more like a warmup for the party mode, where up to four players can compete. It’s nothing like, say, a classic Brain Age with a structure that encourages you to come back and keep improving. Doing well earns you high scores and new looks for your avatar. There’s a pretty basic single-player mode where you can practice each of the mini-games, complete a “test” that involves each of the five categories, or compete against the ghosts of either friends or players online.
One mini-game involves popping numbered balloons in the correct order, while another has you choosing the right shapes to complete an image. The idea is that the games all test different parts of your brain. The twist in the latest is that its focus is almost exclusively on multiplayer play.Īt its most basic, Big Brain Academy is a mini-game collection where each of the games is divided into five different categories: identify, memorize, analyze, compute, and visualize. Each “Brain” game is exactly what it sounds like: a collection of digital brainteasers.
It’s the continuation of a series that started with Brain Age on the Nintendo DS, which, alongside the likes of Wii Sports and Wii Fit, helped solidify the company’s “blue ocean” strategy of reaching a nontraditional gaming audience. This year, Nintendo has released new entries in the WarioWare and Mario Party franchises, and now it’s completing the party trilogy with Big Brain Academy: Brain vs. 2021 is shaping up to be the year of party games on the Switch.