Serious Games: Island of Dr Brain

Quite a number of educational games that I played previously sucked. Both my Primary and Secondary school thought that those games were good for some reason, and so us students were forced to play such games in the name of "education". I've lost count on the number of bad educational games I've played, though what I do remember is that the settings usually had nothing to do with the content material, and the questions/tests were not only boring and lame, but also very easy. So when I played Island of Dr Brain some years later, I was pleasantly surprised.

Sequel to the award winning Castle of Dr Brain, Island of Dr Brain is a puzzle game with adventure elements. You play as Dr Brain's assistant, and your task is to and explore and solve what Dr Brain dubs "security puzzles" on his island in order to retrieve a special battery. There were puzzles on math, language, art history, physics, logic, chemistry, genetics, music, navigation and other subjects. There was even a puzzle on logic gates! And this game is meant for those in elementary school!

The first question you might be asking yourself is how any of these vastly different subjects fit into the context of this game. The answer to that - puzzles. It works to a certain extent because puzzles in a puzzle game don't always have to fit the context of the story to be seen as part of the game. In Zork Nemesis (a non-serious puzzle game), for instance, one puzzle required players to play the correct notes in order to open a door. Does it make sense logically? No. Does it break immersion of the game? No, because the players generally see this as part of the game.

The same goes for Island of Dr Brain in most cases. In one puzzle, the player had to figure out the correct counterweights using three different measuring cups and three different liquids for the lift to function. In another puzzle, the player had to recreate the spectrum using three different chemical powders to gain access to the next room. I think there was even one time I had to invoke simple programming to instruct a robot to fetch a key for me to advance to the next room at one point as well. Because these puzzles were presented in an interesting (and sometimes creative) way, it didn't feel like I was doing homework disguised as a so-called game, but actually playing it and being challenged at the same time. This is where Island of Dr Brain succeeds as an educational learning tool and as a game compared to most other serious games meant for children.



Some puzzles work better than others though, for both the fun and educational level. For one thing, having a German/Spanish/French (at least I think it was French) crossword puzzle in the game wasn't very fun, and I'm not too sure whether the player would be able to remember those foreign words. All I remember is "haar", "vater" and "null", and the rest is forgotten. Also, why would people want to play crossword puzzles on a computer? Where's the fun in staring at the screen for words and using the mouse to highlight those that you find along the way? The same goes for the jigsaw puzzle. There's just little point in transferring that to a computer game, when there are so many physical versions available in shops. Not only that, but this puzzle also had very little educational value.

Still, it's quite a well-developed game. Not perfect, but rather good, especially when compared to the other serious games that I played in school in the name of "education".