EXERCISE YOUR BRAIN

The brain puzzles the Apple store showed me are incredibly boring. Perhaps total math geeks find them interesting. I prefer art and stories as part of my puzzle solving.

In the games I play, I get to pretend to walk into a cartoon landscape, look for stuff, find clues, stop the bad guys, and solve often hard puzzles.

I think these games are also really good for young persons, as they might actually learn some math, etc., while playing.

Originally, these virtual cartoon games, often called IHOPs, were for 9 year old girls, full of fairies and evil sorcerers. Which, of course, I LOVED. But at a game habit of several $6.99 Apple ap games per week, I soon began running out of games. This problem is made worse by some of the best games not upgrading for new operating systems.

So I expanded into games with real pretend murders, detectives seeking ghosts or werewolves, ships sinking due to evil, skulls coming to life.

My main search criteria for these games is the amount I have to pay. I pay less than $10 total per game, and I do not even look at games that charge per hint or object. Almost all of these games allow a free download of the first chapters so you can know what you are buying.

These are the kinds of games that kept my children and their friends busy for hours. They would show friends the game, and laugh as the friends could not do some of the puzzles. The puzzles can be a fun 'right brain, left brain' test as no one can easily do all of the puzzles. I never play the puzzles on HARD. I always go for easy and then can not do some of the math, plumbing, and gear puzzles.

I play the IHOP games without looking at the list of objects. Sort of a, what would the game designer choose, puzzle just for me. I like a fast hint and skip recharge because I find searching scenes to be tedious. I turn off the computer generated music. The sound effects make the game more immersive anyway.

To get you started, let me recommend a few game series from my favorite publisher.

Big Fish Games. Grim Tales. Dark Parables. League of Light.

My kids and I did gaming weekends where we all three together, at the same computer, played the first run through of the game. Remember Seventh Guest?