Brainful review - A fast-paced puzzler that will keep you on your toes
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iOS
| Brainful

Brainful is a game that doesn't take that much explaining, but does take a lot of concentration. It's the sort of game that will make you grind your teeth down to the gums. In a good way.

It's a mix of a puzzler, a memory game, and an arcade blast. You'll need fast fingers, fast thoughts, and enough patience to sit through quite a lot of tutorial too.

But stick with it, and you'll find the sort of experience that would only ever really work on mobile. And the sort of experience that might have you punching yourself in the face just to calm yourself down.

Match and move

The game takes place on three lines. These are three different colours. To begin with you're tapping on blocks that match the colour of those lines.

If you tap a blue block, then the next block you need to tap will be on the blue line. So far so simple. You'll go through three levels of colour matching, and then things start to get a lot more complex.

First symbols get thrown into the mix. Again, they represent one of the three different lines. Then it's numbers, and then it's symbols on a dice. They're still matching the different coloured lines, but now you need to remember even more information.

After that you get the negation tiles. These are coloured blocks with a cross in them, and after you've tapped on one of them you need to tap on one of the two lines of a different colour.

When you've completed all of the tutorial levels, it's time to head out to the endless mode. Here everything is combined, and you're chasing your high score.

It's the sort of thing that's going to have you squeezing your phone in frustration when you make a mistake. And because there are no controls to speak of here, it's always your own mistake that ends the run.

Match some more

Brainful mixes together a whole bunch of ideas that we've seen before, but it manages to put a fresh spin on them, and that's actually really exciting.

It takes a while to get going, but when you've finally completed the tutorial and you've got the hang of things, then you're going to have a ball of a time. I mean, it'll be an angry ball, but that's just fine.

Brainful review - A fast-paced puzzler that will keep you on your toes

A fast and angry puzzler that's an awful lot of fun once you get to grips with it
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.