Dr Kawashima’s Devilish Brain Training: Can you stay focused? is also known as Brain Age: Concentration Training outside of Europe. While the game was released in America in 2012, it took until 2017 before it was released in Europe. This is a puzzle game that leans more towards being a piece of edutainment software. It is the 3DS entry of the popular Brain Age series of games that debuted on the DS. Upon starting the game, a crude 3D head representing Dr Kawashima (based on the real life scientist) explains that in today’s world, with smartphones and other devices being so handy, we are constantly receiving information that has reduced our capability to focus and concentrate. Thus, the game aims to improve that aspect. This is basically a selection of mini-games of varying levels with a focus on memorization and simple calculations. The key activities include combining simple arithmetic with memorization, memorization of cards and finding obscured objects that had been moved around. Considering that Dr Kawashima is your personal trainer, so to speak, and is only represented by the crude 3D model along with a pair of floating hands, he’s pretty charismatic. The graphics are simple and the 3D effect is quite subdued.
The goal of the game is to play through a few five minute sessions every day, and hopefully as a result of that, you feel yourself improve. The first mini-game it presents is part of the Devilish Training series, which feels like its flagship mode. It starts you off at the easiest level and depending on your results, it’ll increase, decrease or have the difficulty stay the same. These activities are short and so you’ll be completing a few of them within the five minute session. The way it increases and decreases the difficult is a bit sensitive. You might strike lucky in one and move onto the next level before you’re ready, or you just have a bad attempt and you end up going back a level. A lot of the core activities rely on memorization and missing one means that you’ll have no hope of getting back on track. It is better to retry than to carry on which makes it feel like that it depends on luck to get handed a set that’s fine.
There are numerous attempts to keep you addicted and coming back every day. There are achievements and tracks your stats of your daily efforts in graphical format. New content is only unlocked as you return on subsequent days and it takes a total of 40 real-time days before all the content is available. In the first few days, you’ll quickly run out of content because the game blocks you from repeating challenges after that day’s attempt, which is somewhat annoying if you wanted to practice more. It takes around a week or so before a sizable amount of content is unlocked and a month before everything is unlocked. There are optional mini-games that you can play as much as you want including a Tetris-like clone but with additional set of rules. The best modes and the ones that are the most fun are the ones that is not part of the “Devilish” series. Since these are more like mini-games, such as “battles” where your attacks are doing quick sums, or “Block Head” where you try and capture the most points on squares compared to the AI. They also feel less tedious as you’re not forced to repetitively do them for at least five minutes at a time.
All the mini-games uses the touchscreen heavily. Most of the time you’ll write down your answers, or manipulate the onscreen objects using the stylus. The number and letter recognition works for the most part but there will be instances where it reads it incorrectly and it marks your answer as incorrect which can feel unfair. Unfortunately, the game loses its novelty fairly quickly. It becomes tedious and boring since at the end of the day, it’s just basic arithmetic and memory exercises which are not substantial enough to be called proper mini-games. Several of the activities have varying difficulties. For “Block Head”, the hard stages takes the fun out of the easier stages. This is because your opponents get unfair advantages (moving twice in a row or having two separate icons compared to your one). Beating the stage just ends up being a process of elimination to see where your opponent is programmed to go, rather than it being a true puzzle or test of skill. It makes it frustrating and annoying to the point where you’re just going to give up since the opponent so blatantly cheats, and there is only the one way to beat the stage, i.e. the one route that the developer wanted you to.
Overall, Dr Kawashima’s Devilish Brain Training: Can you stay focused? is fun for what it is. It’s a piece of edutainment software that can be fun to track how you’re going, or improving, as the days go along. Sure, it does lose its novelty fairly quickly but the first week or two, with the frequent unlocking of new events, and interesting tidbits presented by Dr Kawashimi, makes it enjoyable and worthwhile to at least given it a try.
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