There are lot of casual games which are fun to play as well as tingle your basic cognitive skills. For enhancing creative thinking, I would really look at this game I played recently called “Mystery PI- Vegas Heist“. Its a puzzle game which involves finding lots of hidden stuff at places around Las Vegas to solve a robbery case.
I say, this game builds creative thinking. How? well, it reminds me of my first week of design college. Our course guide during our creativity workshop talked about “making familiar strange and making strange familiar”. The exercises were aimed to
1. question our assumptions about what we see everyday
2. to establish that there is nothing called a ‘correct’ solution
This game opens our minds to seeing everyday objects in a different way. While we are searching for an object, the game hides the objects with these basic principles.
MysteryPI- Vegas Heist
(click the image for a larger view)
color (“air-pump”- the object and background have similar colors)
size (making a small object big or a big object small- a penny can be the size of a giant wheel)
form (“Lighthouse”- Notice where it is placed)
look (“Telephone”- photo-realistic or an illustration)
type (“Camera”- Can you spot the two types of cameras in the picture?)
perspective (the train looks very different from our perception when seen from the front)
cryptic (“toy deliverer”- who delivers toys?…)
I’m not sure playing the game once will permanently upgrade your creativity, but repeated exercises like these will certainly brighten the grey cells. Unfortunately, I expired my trial. Eagerly waiting to play the whole game!
Am a huge fan of PopCap games and the games they create, not the ones they publish. But this time, I’ll make an exception. Also, check out the awesome player profiles that they base their games on.
Filed under: Visual Thinking
