Who says you have to pick between art and science? The Tate, a British art institution, thinks that art and science enhance each other, and they've enlisted the gaming geniuses at Preloaded to create a game combining the Alice in Wonderland art exhibition currently showing in one of their museums with learning about the fascinating ways our brains work. The result is Wondermind, a set of four mini-games that are fun in themselves and also serve to illustrate the fascinating ways our brains work.
The mini-games are all of classic type: card matching, pipe connecting, path drawing, and light angling. While all feature gorgeous art, none of them break any new ground in gameplay, and there's not much to keep you playing beyond five minutes or so each. But they weren't meant to get you hooked like a typical game is. They're designed to be a short illustrative experience to help prepare you for the interactive video that follows, which explains some aspect of the brain, such as how babies learn language. You also get to see some of the quirky, delightful, or just plain weird art inspired by Alice in Wonderland, so if you can't get to Tate Liverpool, this is the next best thing. The game is aimed at kids, but while adults might find it a bit easy, it's certainly beautiful enough to reel anyone in, and the facts taught about the mind are, well, yes, wondrous.
it wasn't until after the forest game that I realized that the Wonderland menu is shaped like a brain! I really enjoyed these games, especially the light mirror one! =D
The forest one made me feel guilty for neglecting to keep updated with my field of study. (I'm not working in the field I studied.)
Nice game, very pretty and soothing graphics.
Good starting idea, and I love "brain training", but this is just too un-challenging and dull.
And, the quotes from Alice during loading disappears too fast. (should I learn to read even faster, or get a slower connection?)
Really cute, but I eventually had to sabotage myself on The Garden because it went on for so long. I like that it combines gaming with learning--good stuff!
Hmmm... i like it, but... Is it a bug that I had mirrors disappearing - thus rendering the level impossible to beat - when I accidentally pulled a mirror on another one, or is it part of the game?
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Hedge Maze mirrors disappeared on me, too, plus sometimes they were difficult to place, i.e., they wouldn't stay where I placed them. Light beam, too, wouldn't always work and time limit seemed pretty short for little kids (and especialy for me!). Overall a wonderful concept. I visit museum/institute sites a lot and always check out their games, and this one is great!
There was a bug in the Reflection mini-game and the developer just sent over a new version that should fix that.
Still losing mirrors for me.
I wasn't able to get to the videos from the version here, but they were available from the version at http://wondermind.tate.org.uk. (Each game has a button to skip the game and go to the video.)
The games were ok other than the garden game which was way too easy, but I wish I could have played the more difficult rounds in the mirror game instead of having to start again when I ran out of time.
I found the videos to be much more interesting, even though they're aimed at children.
nice visuals, but not sure that "gaming geniuses at preloaded" and "none of them break any new ground in gameplay" should be part of the same review / 'press release'
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