Back To School Month 2018: 5 mobile games for maths students
Best number games to get your brain in gear
It's Back To School Month here on Pocket Gamer. What does that mean? Well, that it's the month in which all the kiddy-winkles go back to school. Obviously.
We thought we'd mark the occasion with a bunch of features.
Whether you're a school returner looking to distract yourself from the misery of returning, or a parent celebrating the return of your free time, you'll be wanting a mobile game or three to help pass the time.
In this particular mini-series, we're looking at the games that might help out students of county stuff. Or, to give the subject it's official title, mathematics.
1
Calculords
Just the name of this game screams 'maths nerd!' at you. Calculords follows through on that promise in glorious style, with a combination of turn-based strategy, deck-building, and mathematical puzzler.
The twist here is that, rather than using energy or resources to deploy your troops, you have to use equations. And it's up to you to do the hard sums.
2
Threes!
The grand duke of number puzzlers, Threes is the game that single-handedly introduced a new form of numerical mobile brain teaser to the world. Don't accept any substitutes.
The idea is to swipe in the four cardinal directions to merge like-numbers together in a 4x4 grid. Keep going until you run out of moves.
3
Twelve A Dozen
Twelve A Dozen is more of a platformer than a number puzzler. In fact, it's arguably the most effective case we've seen of a mobile game sneaking maths into a fun experience.
Of course, there's a mathematical twist to the jumping, as you change the value of your little number by combining it with other figures dotted around the colourful world.
4
Cotrio
This intriguing little number puzzler gives you a pyramid of numerical values, and tasks you with balancing them out using maths and good old positional sense.
Take any triangle of numbers within that pyramid, and two of the values need to add up to the third. It's a brain tickling conundrum that doesn't forget the fun part.
5
Hundreds
This is a uniquely stylish puzzler from the team that brought you the original endless runner, Canabalt. There's a similar neon palette to Hundreds, but the gameplay is something else entirely.
Hundreds is all about basic sums and cryptic cyphers, which sounds like the perfect game for a maths student to us. Touch the moving circles to make them add up to 100 - but don't let them touch each other while you're touching them.
