About Brainpilates
Brainpilates is a daily puzzle game. Four games a day, about a minute in total, then a card showing how you did. It is free, there is no account, and there are no ads.
The games contain no words. Not as a gimmick, but because it changes who can play: nothing has to be translated, nothing has to be read, and a child who is still working on reading is not at a disadvantage. That turned out to matter more than expected. The first real testers were an eight-year-old and an adult playing together, and both of them found it hard enough to be worth doing.
How a day works
The daily mix draws four games from a pool of twelve, one from each of four different faculties, so no two days feel quite the same. It is generated from the date itself, which means everyone playing on a given day gets the same four games. When the set is done you get a card with your score and a shape drawn from how you did in each of the four.
If a minute is not enough, the levels ladder keeps going for as long as you want, getting harder as you climb. You can also practice any single game on its own, including The Divide and Color Sort.
The twelve games
Focus
- Outlier
- Six shapes. One of them breaks the pattern the others share.
- Find the Difference
- Two scenes side by side, and a handful of things that do not match. Wrong taps cost you.
Abstraction
- The Divide
- Two groups of shapes. One follows a hidden rule, the other breaks it. Work out which side a new shape belongs to.
Logic
- Next
- A run of numbers with one missing. Find what comes next.
- Tic-Tac-Toe
- Against the computer. On the higher levels it cannot be beaten, only drawn.
Memory
- Recall
- A grid lights up for a moment. Light it up again from memory.
Planning
- Color Sort
- Pour colours between tubes until each one holds a single colour.
- Sliding Tiles
- Slide the tiles back into order through the one empty square.
- Tetris
- The one you already know. Clear lines before the stack reaches the top.
Spatial
- Fold It
- A flat shape. Work out which solid it folds into.
- Picture Puzzle
- Swap pieces until the picture is whole again.
- Jigsaw
- See the picture, then build it from loose pieces.
How the score works
Solving a game is worth 70 points. Beating that game’s par time adds up to 30 more. A miss scores 25. Your score for the set is the average across the games you played.
Every game is measured against its own par time rather than one shared clock. A round of Tetris takes far longer than spotting an outlier, and it would be unfair to treat the difference as slowness. Solving a game at its par time scores 90 whichever game it is.
Solving counts for more than speed on purpose. If speed decided everything, the adult would win every time and the eight-year-old would stop playing.
What the card is, and what it is not
The card at the end shows how you did in today’s four games. That is all it shows. It is not a cognitive assessment, it has not been validated against anything, and it says nothing about how your memory or attention work in daily life.
We also make no claim that playing Brainpilates improves your thinking. The evidence that puzzle games transfer to general mental ability is weak, and companies in this category have been fined for saying otherwise. Brainpilates is a game. The honest reason to play it is that it is enjoyable and it takes a minute.
Your data
Your streak, levels and records are kept in your own browser and nowhere else. There is no login, no email address to hand over, and no third-party advertising. One practical consequence: progress does not currently follow you from your phone to your laptop, and clearing your browser data clears it.
Questions
- Is Brainpilates free?
- Yes. The daily mix and the levels are free to play, there is no account to create and there are no ads.
- What age is it for?
- Eight and up. The games use no words at all, so reading ability is not what decides how well you do. In practice a child and an adult can sit down together and both find it hard enough to be interesting.
- Do I need an account?
- No. Your streak, your levels and your records are stored in your own browser. Nothing is sent anywhere, which also means they do not currently follow you from your phone to your laptop.
- Is everyone playing the same puzzles?
- Yes, for the daily mix. It is generated from the date, so every player gets the same four games on the same day, wherever they are. The levels ladder is different: it gives you a fresh set every time.
- How is the score worked out?
- Solving a game is worth 70 points. Beating that game's par time adds up to 30 more. A miss scores 25. Your score is the average across the games you played. Every game has its own par time, so the slow games are not harder to score well on than the quick ones.
- Will Brainpilates make me smarter?
- We make no such claim. There is no good evidence that puzzle games improve general intelligence or memory in daily life, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something. Brainpilates is a puzzle game. Play it because it is enjoyable.
Brainpilates is made by one person in Umeå, Sweden. If something is broken or a puzzle seems wrong, it is worth telling me about.