Brain Games Reviews

We played Phoney Baloney five or six times last week. Once for a party and the other times as a family. Once we didn't even finish the game because we started talking about one of the subjects in the game. We also use the cards as topics for our home schooling. We received our game as a gift, then later gave two as gifts to our friends. The only thing that could be improved is the card holder. It's no big deal and doesn't change the game, but it should be made of plastic instead of card board. The rest is great.

Outwit and outsmart your opponents, but not with the right answer. This time, you have to choose the wrong answers. The more answers that you get that are wrong, the more points you get. Confusing, right? Not at all. You get on a roll going as fast as you can to beat your opponents for an intriguing and fun game. Plus, this helps you understand the rule of elimination. So even if you don't know the right answer, you can choose the ones that you know are obviopusly wrong. Or you can just geuss.

Just like you did on your tests at school, right?

Phoney Baloney gives interesting facts before asking the question. These facts, as well as that all players participate on every turn, has led to fun family times and good discussions. It's also the only game I know where there can be more than one winner. Phoney Baloney is a winner.

i played this game for the first time with friends...after that i was begging my fiance to get it finally she caved and we cant put it down! great with friends!

We played this at Christmas with family and then had to go out and buy our own set. It is a perfect blend of game themes/styles. We have played it with people as young as 8 years old and they had fun as well. It is played with teams so everyone gets to feel included. :) A great buy.

My husband and I received 'Cranium' as a wedding present from a friend. One evening we had some friends over and we opened up the game and started playing... we LOVED it! It's a perfect mixture of Pictionary, Balderdash, Charades, Trival Pursuit and many others! My personal favorite is "Humdinger." It's the part of the game where a team member needs to hum or whistle a song that's on the card. The game is very entertaining and is guarenteed to get you laughing!

This is a fun toy. I took mine to a get-together with friends, and we had a lot of fun trying to, and seeing how fast we could, put it together in both d's (times ranged from five or six minutes to people giving up). Besides being a really neat idea, it's patriotic, too- something you can leave in the living room. If you like the rubik's cube (and even if you don't- I can never get it) you'll have a lot of fun with this. Definitely a 5!

This is a fun puzzle for anytime. I like to keep it next to the couch so that people can enjoy it when they have an unoccupied minute. It's actually quite difficult to master. Fun, though. I love the patriotic motif.

This is a really great puzzle. It is complex enough to be a challenge, but it is good even for children. It is a cube first, with patriotic images on it, but this turns into a flat puzzle if you take it apart and put it back together in the right way. It is really fun!

It's simple, very few rules and a few adult beverages help the creative process. Visual Eyes has taken the place of Scattergories, Taboo and Pictionary at our get togethers. It is also a wonderful learning tool for children and helps stimulate imagination and creativity. Fun for all ages.

Our entire family was able to enjoy this game. The 5 year old was creating new and imaginative word combos while the 8 and 9 year old were tracking on all the common usages they could find.

This game is also a hit with grown ups!

Each person sees a different set of words. We were laughing for a long time.........a perfect party game.

This game is so much fun!! I love word play - games that actually exercise your mind - and this one excels at it! It's great for a range of ages.... from young children learning vocabulary as well as an older audience. (It's even fun at social get togethers - cocktails help bring out some really outrageous word combinations!) The dice are a good size and the graphics are easily read. I highly recommend this game. Friends and I used to get together and play Catch Phrase at parties - now we break out VisualEyes! It's also nice because it's so user friendly - so easy to understand - not a lot of rules to try to remember. It's just good fun!!

"Conceal Outguess Deduce Amaze"
If you enjoyed reading The Da Vinci Code, you'll love playing Coda!This runaway hit in Japan is making its way to the USA! Use your detective skills to crack your opponents code before your is revealed. Coda is truly a classic in the making!

I bought this game with the thought of the "Mastermind" game in mind. If you use the rules supplied with the game it is a fun and light game of logic and deduction. I have read a couple of reviews of this game on the net and most have given me the impression they felt it is not a difficult game. Based on the rules supplied, my opinion it has moderate complexity even with the advanced rules. For those of you who wish additional complications with this game, my own solution to this is to use the tiles as 0-dash, dash counting as 13, and throwing the numerical order rule out the door. When a tile is relinquished by making an incorrect "attack", position the tile to the next highest number in your particular sequence. If your code is 5,7,4,3,10, and you draw a white 9, place it to the left of the next highest white or black number or place it with the corresponding color, depending on how much information you want this game variant to reveal(agree upon this at the start to avoid quarrels). Your sequence would now read 5,7,4,3,9(revealed face down)and 10. This variant should provide the added complexity some game reviewers of this game felt was lacking because the tiles are not placed in any numerical order until an incorrect attack occurs. Of course, those mathematicians in the peanut gallery I am sure could find further difficulties if they chose. This game has more potential than the rules supply. Fun.

I got this game for my 5 year-old daughter at Christmas, and we are hooked! It's challenging for her, but she gets it; I am so addicted to it that I go to the SET website every day to solve the daily puzzle! (Which, I might add, is excellent for learning how to play the game and for practice.) At the SET Enterprises site, you can also buy a PC version of the game if you prefer this to using cards, as I do.

I gave this three stars for durability only because this is played with cards--like any card game, they can get lost, bent, whatever. I keep this in MY room so the cards don't get lost (and so I can play after my daughter goes to bed)!

This might be too difficult for most young kids (it's perfectly suited to my daughter's learning/thinking style) so beware the frustration factor. However, you can play easier versions as well to start (by using only one color, for example) and progress to the full game for them. TEN stars for educational value--it's a great brain workout!

Anyone who likes puzzle-type games will love this!

I was introduced to this game as a Senior in high school while on a Girl Scout trip to Michigan. We played it every chance we got between planned activities. It gets loud and fast. It wasn't too tricky to learn, just to 'see' the sets.
When I got home it took months to find a toy store that had it, let alone heard of it.
Once I found it I introduced it to my friends and half of them loved it, the other half never wanted to play me again. Most of the people who loved playing it were very math oriented in their thinking. People who are language people seem to have more trouble at first for some reason.
It definately helps develop perception, thinking and pattern recognition skills. Not to mention addictive. I would recomed it for anyone over the age of about 8.

Highly addictive game because there are no turns, just every body whaling away at once. Trying to match up these shapes and colors becomes maddening after awhile. It is quite easy to get lost and see no matches what so ever and all of a sudden your brain will just click and you will be seeing sets everywhere. This is a very simple game to learn and very hard to master. First time players will get frustrated very easily if they are playing with SET veterans. The idea is to match any three cards on the table by having all of the card's characteristics being all the same or all different. Your spatial reasoning will get a real work out as you play through the deck the number of times equal to the number of players. Points are scored for each successful set and points are lost for incorrectly picking a set(which happens alot when everyone is in a hurry to find the next set.). A great great game that is loads of fun but a real mental workout.

Add us to the host of folks who love this puzzle toy. I generally consult Amazon ratings before purchasing new items and any item that has this many positive ratings always catches my attention. And it lives up to the promise. My almost 7 year-old son is ADHD and I was AMAZED at the way this toy captured his attention. I expected him to become quickly frustrated and give up. But after a few successes, he was hooked. I coached him a little bit at first (and then I was hooked too!) and before I knew it, he was solving puzzles by himself and doing a better job than me! He did the first 20 in one sitting. I was amazed as I watched him begin understanding which cars had to be where in order for him to get the red car out, then he started working out his plan to get there. You have to think ahead to be successful and he was doing it!

His persistence and concentration surprised me, so if your child is having any problems sitting and concentrating on a task, don't be afraid of this toy! But, alas, as with many ADHD kids, he's also been tested as gifted, so he's already run through the first 3 levels and is now nearly done with the expert level - solving puzzles that I can't do! I have to wait until he goes to bed to even get a chance to play! There's 40 cards in the first pack. The beginning levels are pretty easy to remember the solutions, but as you go higher in difficulty, you could probably do the puzzles more than once and still be challenged. But do be prepared to buy the 2, 3, and 4 Gift Pack (a great deal for $12 on Amazon)

I LOVE the fact that you store the cards right in the bottom of the tray. However,I wish that they would put a more permanent kind of cover on the tray. Also, you cannot replace the cover when you are in the middle of a puzzle, the cars have to be in the tray in a certain way in order for the cover to fit properly. But those are extremely minor drawbacks considering the hours of entertainment my son and I have gotten.

Ever stuck in gridlock? Think you know the easiest way out? Then you are ready to take the challenge of Binary Arts' Rush Hour Game. Beware escaping gridlock is not as easy at it seems.

The directions are simple; setup the game board using the forty game cards, arranged from beginners' skill level to the expert. Move the cars and trucks out of the way and get you red car off the board.

The game is made to have you thinking, and planning strategy is a key to winning. I found myself playing for hours and the more I played the more fun I had. Also since storage is easy this game travels well.

For those rainy days, those family night outings or when friends drop over, you can't go wrong with this game. About the only thing Binary Arts needs now is a thinking game involving aircraft.

Many of the reviews posted so far say, in one way or another, "I bought this for a kid, but I love it, too." I'm not ashamed to say that I'm neither a parent nor a teacher and that I bought this for myself. (I did buy another set for my sister's kids when I saw how great it was.) I've always liked Binary Arts products, and this did not disappoint. What I especially like, and why I think it's valuable educationally, is that it forces you to identify the root causes of the problem and to map out intermediate goals on your way to a solution. If you like this kind of thinking, you'll enjoy this game.

As others have noted, the packaging is not great because it makes it a little too easy to lose pieces. That accounts for my 4 stars for "durability."

This game really is great. My autistic 11-year-old gets
a good mental challenge and feeling of accomplishment out of it,
and I have fun as well. My only negative comment is regarding
travel. We've taken it on many plane trips, and it's great
because it fits in a small area to play as well as store, but
it has a lot of small parts (duh! :-), and they are easy to lose
track of when travelling. So be vigilant, and find all those
train cars when putting it away! :-)

This is a fabulous game for people of all ages. Even little kids can play the easy cards. The harder ones can be very engrossing for adults. My son started playing it when he was 4 years old. I have also given it to somebody as a present for their 40th birthday. I recommend it for anybody who wants a bit of a mental challenge.

This is a great puzzle game. Kids learn problem solving and adults practice their own problem solving; all of this brain work is neatly disquised because they are having fun. I wish that Binary Arts would come out with more card sets for their Railroad game like they have for the Rush Hour game. I want extra puzzles! It would make it more rewarding to own.

This game was bought for my 3 year old daughter. She/we have so much fun with it! It promotes turn taking, matching, sorting, problem solving and fine motor skills! If your looking for a great game that you can also use as an educational tool, this ones for you :)

This is a great game for a wide range of ages. There are a variety of ways to play from simply emptying the jar and putting back the pieces to matching the shapes, in addition to using it as a memory game or first to match all wins game. The game is very durable and lots of fun

Our son received this game for his 4th birthday and he LOVES it! He is always asking someone to play it with him and he has quickly learned the rules for the easier level of play (put all the cream cookie halves in the cookie jar, deal the plain halves, and taking turns in succession to try and pick the cream halves' shapes that match the plain ones). The first one to match all their cookie halves wins. This simple game has taught him how to take turns, rules, and shape identification. He never has a problem with losing a game, but that's probably because he's eager to play another round.

What I also like about this "game" is that even a younger child can play with it. Just to find two matching shapes and put them together will keep a young toddler occupied.

We certainly recommend this fun, durable, educational and inexpensive toy to anyone looking for a gift for that 2-5 year old.

We've all see this toy before, haven't we?

Although I owned Rubik's Magic rings as a kid, a similar but easier-to-solve toy, I never owned the most famous, the original Rubik's cube. I tried, but always got stuck after figuring out one of the sides.

Fast forwarding to a few months ago, I saw it again at a friend's house and was inexplicably hooked. I knew it was only a matter of time before I ordered it.

This cube has proved to be reasonably durable and is fun if you like puzzles. Don't bother to buy a guide to how to figure it out, as there are TONS of solutions on the Internet, from the basic ones to the fast solutions which require a lot of memorization. Whether you cheat or figure it out yourself, it will certainly keep you entertained and is a good value for the money.

The Rubik's Cube has got to be the most classic puzzle toy of all time. But I don't really consider it a toy because I've known a lot of adults that like the cube better than kids do. You have several different colors on the cube and you try to match them up where all the different colors are matched up on every side of the cube. It's easier said than done, but after you keep trying long enough, you'll solve the puzzle eventually. I've heard of people taking the stickers off and placing them in different sections of the cube, but that would take the fun out of it.

I've been playing the Rubik's Cube since I was a kid and when there's nothing else to do or when I feel like taking a good challenge, I still like trying to solve the difficult puzzle every now and then. The cube can be good for kids because it can teach them some thinking and concentration skills, but it's great for anybody no matter how old you are. It's real durable and not easy to break even when you drop it. Just as long as you don't remove any of the stickers from their original spot, the stickers will also stay in place and you'll have the Rubik's Cube to challenge you for the rest of your life.

I recommend anybody who likes puzzles or a good challenge every now and then to get the Rubik's Cube.

...Was the title of a book I bought out of sheer frustration when I was a kid in the mid-eighties, stuck with a mixed-up Cube I couldn't solve. Well, the book was very helpful and allowed me to solve my Cube on a regular basis, so eventually I got bored and put my Cube aside.

I left home in 1992 to join the Army and my stepmom put all my childhood stuff in storage. I didn't get a whole lot of my stuff back til I came back to the Memphis area (for the second time) in 2001... and there, amongst my things, was that selfsame Rubik's Cube.

And lo and behold if it doesn't still work beautifully after nine years in storage! Doesn't even need to be lubricated, all the stickers are still intact (even if some of them have nicks in them) and... it's still mixed up, doggone it, and now I wish I had my book again!

Definitely a fun toy. I have heard most kids these days would rather zonk out on the computer than play something that might actually provide an intellectual challenge. It's a shame, too.