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Steve Keen puts his nose to the grindstone and examines Sierra's latest brain-straining puzzler.
STRETCH THAT GREY MATTER
Corey Cole is the man behind such award-winning puzzlers as The Quest For Glory series. This is his latest teasing adventure and, although you won't find it as taxing as his others, you're guaranteed to have just as much fun.
The titular Dr. Brain is an eccentric scientist who specializes in the weird and wonderful. He transforms everyday objects into automated models and experiments in all things bizarre. As luck would have it he's in need of a lab assistant and is advertising in a local paper for one. All applicants must apply in person and complete a series of mind-bending puzzles that the good Doctor has spread throughout his mysterious home.

The puzzles themselves are a mixture of the mathematical, logical, practical, and miscellaneous fun. Anyone with an inbred hatred of maths needn't fear, though, as the problems involving numbers are quite well disguised and presented in such a way you don't realize that you're actually doing them. Some old favorites such as the magic square (where you have to fill in a 3x3 cube with numbers from one to nine making all the rows add up to the same number) brush shoulders with more diverse tasks. Constructing your own circuit boards and solving binary problems as well as negotiating mazes are all reminiscent of TV's The Crystal Maze or perhaps more of its older BBC cousin, The Adventure Game (remember that?).

KID'S STUFF
The manual declares that this is a game for ages twelve to adult and this seems correct. On one hand, the appearance of the game and its graphics have a child-like charm, but the atmosphere created and the deviousness of some of the puzzles can easily lift the product above that of a youngster. The three difficulty options ensure that the game will be no walk over for the long in tooth, whilst when set on 'novice' it provides just the right amount of fun and thought provoking for those with less of an attention span.

The game's not all fun, though, as the time spent accessing disks and the lack of speed in each level are a genuine nightmare. The mouse/cursor controls are extremely unresponsive and often more than four seconds behind in some sections. I could say that this ruined my enjoyment of the game and in most other cases it would, but The Castle Of Dr. Brain is so original, I can't bring myself to dismiss it in that manner. This is probably the only genuinely fun piece of educational software I've come ever across and if you buy it for a child it won't be long before you whip it out of a cupboard after lights out for a go yourself. Great stuff.