If you've played this game's predecessor, Brain School, you'll feel right at home. If not, the premise is pretty simple. The game is divided into four years, representative of an educational life cycle. Each year contains five puzzles, and each puzzle has five difficulty levels. Initially only the first year is unlocked, and to open up each subsequent year you must complete a certain number of levels with an A+ score as well as completing the exam for the prior year. An exam simply requires you to complete a specified number from a mix of puzzles for the year in which you are taking the exam - more on that later. There's really no way to lose the game, and I guess at a base level you could say you've "won" the game when you've completed the exam for all four years.

You'll recognize a majority, if not all, of the activities, though some might not be what you'd consider traditional puzzles. Year five (years 1-4 are what comprise Brain School) has such favorites as Classroom Cleanup (Sokubon) and Fine Art (the sliding puzzle game), as well as games like Wordswap, where you have to match up a list containing the first parts of several words with a list containing the second part of each of those words. In year six there are puzzles such as Tangrams, where you must take a bunch of small shapes and arrange them into one big shape, and English, which makes you form a word out of letters swirling around in a circle. I think you get the idea of what types of games you might expect.

Just like in Brain School, I actually enjoyed several of the puzzles that I didn't think I'd find appealing. There's something about doing learning type stuff just because you can that makes it much more interesting than doing it because you have to. That being said, there were a few things that didn't sit quite right with me. While I appreciate the desire to cover a very diverse range of puzzles, I felt the ones that weren't timed really broke up the flow of the game. Going from a minute and a half for solving 10 questions in a puzzle to somewhere between five to ten minutes to solve question 1 of 6 in a sokubon puzzle just seemed out of place. The other disadvantage to the long puzzles was that there was no way to save, so if you had completed four out of six sokubon puzzles then had to quit for some reason, you'd have to play those four again to complete the remaining two. Some of the puzzles could have used better instructions. In year six, for example, it took me a while before I figured out how to do the Physics and the Art Of Zen puzzles.

As mentioned earlier, part of the requirement for completing each year is to pass an exam. The exam is comprised of a series of questions based on the timed puzzles for the given year. You can only get three wrong, and you must answer a certain number correctly before time is up in order to pass the exam. Unfortunately, while you know how many you have to answer in order to pass, you don't know while you're taking the exam how many you've actually answered. This was a gripe I had with Brain School as well, and I still think it would be a nice feature to have.

There are a few other things to do in Brain College as well, mostly related to statistics concerning your performance and grades. However, I personally didn't get much into that, because then it feels too much like some of these other games whose goal is to "shape your brain". I like playing Brain College (and Brain School, for that matter) because they are simply fun collections of puzzles that actually might have some educational value to them as well.

Much like in Brain School, the aesthetics of Brain College take a strong second place to the game play. The graphics serve their purpose, and are decent in that regards, but there aren't any games in particular where the visuals stand out. In fact, for the most part the graphics are minimal, just providing enough visual for you to accomplish your tasks. The sound is the same way, and many of the puzzles don't even have sound except when related to things like right / wrong answers and time running out. There is no music in the game, which kind of seems like a shame to me, though I suppose it isn't really necessary.

Overall, Brain College is a worthy successor to Brain School. Even if you haven't played the first one, however, there is still a lot of fun to be had here. With 100 levels and 4 exams to beat to 100% complete the game, Brain College should keep you busy for quite some time. Even if you don't choose to complete every level, there's still much to be done to finish all 4 years at a minimal level. It's time to get your thinking cap on and enroll in Brain College.

Overall Score: 7/10
Product Page: Brain College page
You can try or buy the game for $14.95 here

* Note: images courtesy of Clickgamer