Abstract:

Developing cognitive skills is important for obtaining the ability to learn new information that represents an important for successful learning. We developed a set of cognitive games through we can train and strengthen fundamental cognitive abilities: attention, memory, reaction speed, logical problem-solving and memory retention. These will help children to improve their learning skills. These cognitive training is composed of different brain games that can be played from any mobile device. The games are simple to play: they are challenging but not so difficult and also users (or children’s parents). Comparing to existing games, we developed new games with funny avatars, adaptive game speed (step size), larger font size, position of objects and text (more intuitive position).

We developed 6 games:
1) Match game - find identical cards,
2) Collect & Create - collect different objects for making a pie / a puzzle,
3) Collect Objects - collect one type of object and avoid the others,
4) Get the Differences - find the differences between two scenes,
5) Organize Numbers - organize 15 numbers in ascending order,
6) Object Maze - moving through a maze avoiding some objects and collecting as much as possible other types of objects; the difficulty of the next level depends on the score obtained in the current level.

At the end of each session, the score obtained by the player is saved in a MySQL database stored on the Cloud. The information saved are the following: ID of the user, name of the game (for example: make a pie, puzzle, etc), obtained score, date and time when the game is over.

Match Game:
Initially, a set of cards with images are shown upside down. Cards contain pairs of images. The game consists in getting all the pairs of two cards. If both cards have the same image, the score will be increased, otherwise the cards will roll again. The game is won when the all pairs of images are found.
The Collect&Create” game contains of two mini games that are based on collecting different objects that depending on the game will be used to make a pie or to make a puzzle. The player has an avatar that is controlled by touch screen gesture.

Collect Objects:
The player is placed on a road on which he / she must collect one type of object that is shown at the beginning of the game. The object is randomly generated between a collection of predefined objects.

Get the Differences:
The game consists in 2 scenes: left and right. The left scene is different from the right one. It may contain:
1) different objects from the right scene or
2) same objects but some of them are rotated compared with the objects from the left image.

Organize Numbers:
The game consists in 15 squares with numbers and an empty square arranged in the form of 4 x4 grid (4 rows and 4 columns). The squares contain numbers from 1 to 15. The player must arrange the numbers in an ascending order.

Object Maze:
The game consists in moving a red square through a maze. It has a start position and it must get to the finish one. The maze contains different objects. Some objects will give to the user extra points if the user will go through the cells with that objects.
The cognitive games were tested for children. They provided highly effective for children for improving learning capabilities and for elderly to maintain healthy.

Keywords:

Cognitive games, learning skills, adaptive game.