Thanks to XenoHorizon for the review code

Test Your Mind
System: Wii U (eShop)
Price: $2.99
Release date: 11/12/2015

The main game/story

In this brainteaser game, you must think outside of the box to find all the solutions to each of the tests! The better you do, the better your grade becomes! A rather simple concept that’s been tried a few times before, by games such as The Impossible Test and even the Wii U eShop game IQ Test.

Graphics

A very simplistic set of 2D designs is all that you’re going to come across in this game. Incredibly basic and not that impressive, but at the very least it doesn’t hinder any of the puzzles.

Music and Sound

Outside of an acoustic piece accompanying the mode select screen, along with a few other forgettable themes, there’s really nothing that’s worth writing home about with this game. Muting the sound altogether would give you the same effect as having it on.

Gameplay

For those unaware of how a brainteaser game works, they pretty much are challenging questions that are meant to make you think outside the box. Touch the smallest circular object on screen? Not the two circles on screen, but the letter o in “Touch” or “Object”. Test Your Mind pretty much offers questions with those tricky ideas in mind, although thankfully it does seem to get a bit creative in the harder difficulties, with a few other game genres getting tossed into the mix. The goal of each difficulty level is to solve as many questions in a row as possible without skipping any, while also completing them as fast as you can. Some of the questions are very clever, while others unfortunately are overly simple, making the game seem like it has a good idea going for it.

Things will be fine as you progress through the different tests, that is until you see all the questions that the game has to offer. Believe it or not, there’s only 21 different questions in the game, and you’ll inevitably have them repeated once you get the hang of them. This essentially eliminates all challenge the game could have had if it had a wider variety of questions, and basically makes it a “memorize solutions then speedrun them” type of game. Combine that with the fact that these tests don’t take that long to complete in the first place, and you have a pretty shallow experience when it comes to the single player.

That being said, Test Your Mind does offer a multiplayer mode: Memory Wars! In this mode, you and a friend use the face buttons on your controllers to make a pattern for the other player to memorize, with the chains getting longer and longer as the game goes on! It’s a very simple competition for points, but it’s nice that the game offers a nice alternative for those tired of the single player. Unfortunately, this mode loses its appeal really quick, so you’ll likely only give it a few tries before putting the game up for good.

Conclusion

In conclusion, while Test Your Mind does capture the idea of a good set of brainteasers, it still falls flat with its boring presentation and lack of variety. Outside of the increasing difficulties and the two player battle mode, there’s really not much to do in this game, and if you somehow manage to perfect the tests already included, then you really have no point in going back to this game unless you have a friend over, and even then Memory Wars likely won’t keep you occupied for too long. For the current price, I honestly can’t say that I would recommend this game. It’s a few steps forward over the company’s first title, Arrow Time U, but it’s also a few steps back in some ways, which honestly makes me give the slight edge to Arrow Time U if you had to choose a game from this publisher. I give Test Your Mind a 3 out of 10.