Mobile Games to Keep Your Mind Sharp

Everyone knows how much mobile phones have changed our day-to-day lives. From instant communication to endless streams of all kinds of content, we could hardly imagine what our day would look like without them.

Offering unparalleled mobility, they can be a great asset to users. However, with all their benefits, there are drawbacks as well. With social media, videos and games at our fingertips, it can be hard to focus on other things.  

Phones are also often blamed for short attention spans and making users addicted. They can even cause physical problems, such as bad posture, wrist pain and eye strain. 

It’s a good thing that the phone offers ways to offset those problems. There are games specifically designed to improve brain performance. 

Sudoku

Perhaps it’s best to start with the classics. The oldest game on this list, Sudoku, dates back to the 18th century in Switzerland. Back then, players called it Latin squares. In 1895, it made its way to a French newspaper. 

The modern variant of the game came to be in 1979. It was a creation of a retired architect and puzzle creator, Howard Garns,  who was 74 years old.

In 1984, it first appeared in Japan, where it got its present name. Its popularity jumped around in the early 2000s when it first appeared in the U.S. newspapers. 

That was about the time when the first Sudoku games for PCs came out. Today, players can find a huge number of Sudoku games for mobile. 

To complete the game, players must solve the puzzle by filling the empty squares on a 9×9 grid. The grid is composed of 3 x 3 squares where the numbers and empty spaces are placed. 

The goal of the game is to fill each row, column, and 3×3 square with numbers of 1-9 without any number repeating. As a result, the game helps with memory and logical thinking.

Lumosity

While there are hundreds of apps for players that want to play Sudoku, there are also apps that offer many games. One of these is Lumosity, a mobile app offering a huge amount of mind games. 

Lumosity categorizes the games based on speed, memory, attention, flexibility, problem-solving, word and math.

For example, games in speed help players with their quick mental processing as well as visualization. 

One of the games in this category includes Highway Hazards. That’s a game where players dodge obstacles while racing. Similarly, the game River Ranger is a fast-paced game for spotting and remembering different animals.

Lumosity is free to download for Android and iOS but also supports a premium version for $11.99 per month.

Brain Dots

With over 40 million downloads, Brain Dots remains one of the most popular mind games on the market. At the first glance, the game appears very simple, with the only objective being to bump two balls together.

But, to achieve the objective, players will need to use flexible thinking, imagination, and logic to pass through the many levels. The primary tool of the game is the pen, which is usable by the player to draw all kinds of lines and shapes to move the two balls.

Creators of the game recommend Brain Dots to all players who enjoy puzzle games, cards, and strategy. Moreover, players can choose to create their own stages for the entire world to solve. So far, players have created more than 3 million stages.

Let’s Not Forget Security!

As with all things related to the online world, each user of mobile phones should be very careful not to attract the attention of hackers.

Users have to be careful when surfing the web and downloading any apps or files on their phones. Luckily for us, mobile phones can be protected. This includes data encryption, fingerprint recognition, and a VPN.

VPN is especially important on mobile. By using the secure tunneled connection a VPN provides, your data is secure. You do not need to share your phone’s private connection with public networks.

As a result, all of your data becomes safer as it travels from one point to another.

 

Feature Photo by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash