Etc: Links for August 2nd, 2019

Links to five games that you can play on your smartphone. Yes, timepass, but also, teach you to think differently, or better (or both!). Some of these you have to pay for – I have purchased and played all of them, and have found them useful.

  1. Monument Valley. (1 and 2)
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    Beautifully designed, haunting music, and for a person like me, who struggles with three dimensional visualization, this game was a literal eye-opener.
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  2. Threes!
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    The free copycat version became much more popular, but this game is rather more challenging, well designed, with better music and sound effects.
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  3. MiniMetro
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    I loved playing this game because it taught me how to think about designing public transportation. To be clear, real world public transportation design is much more difficult, but that’s kind of the point. If this is as difficult as it turns out to be…
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  4. Flipflop Solitaire
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    Solitaire reimagined. That is the point of this game for me – unlearning a lifetime’s worth of conventions is fun in its own right.
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  5. Peak
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    Games, they say, for your brain. I don’t know if that is true, but I have purchased the annual subscription, and made it into a habit. So far, I am enjoying playing these games everyday. I score the least in the Focus category (surprise, surprise) and do the best in language (ditto, ditto).

Of the five, I currently have the last two on my smartphone.