Free Brain Exercise Games
Also see: Windows Games for Seniors from Amazon
Especially for Windows 10
Mental exercise games are among the most popular types of computer games for seniors. Other especially popular game types among 55+ computer users include Solitaire (from the classic Freecell to other flavors), game suites such as Pogo, and many varieties of Facebook games ranging from word games like Words With Friends to create-types like Farmville.
Brain exercise gaming for a some time has been most widely associated with the widely publicized Luminosity website. Another avenue for finding such games now is the Microsoft Store - which has an extensive inventory of game choices that are easy to download and are either free or very low-priced.
If you have a Microsoft ID (if you log into Windows with an email address as your User ID), then you also have access to using the Microsoft Store. You can go to the Microsoft Store through the shopping bag icon on the taskbar, usually located running horizontally along the bottom of your desktop.
Most of what you find on the Microsoft Store will consist of Apps and Games. Apps are software programs of all different varieties. Games are just that - display-oriented apps which you play either solo or player-to-player. Most brain exercise games are solo plays. Some give you feedback on how you're ranking and improving as you play them.
Free games sometimes pause to offer you options to buy enhanced features or versions, but this is just like watching videos on YouTube that have ads at the beginning - getting an occasional pitch is just the price of getting to play or view something for free.
One example of a brain exercise game from the Microsoft Store is "A Clockwork Brain". If you type that in the Search box in the Microsoft Store, you'll get a description screen with a click button to Download. Once it's downloaded, you'll get a click button on the same display to Play.
A Clockwork Brain is a suite of games specifically to test cognitive skills in five areas - Memory, Attention, Reasoning, Dexterity, and Language.
I found it very interesting myself to see how I ranked higher or lower in those several areas.
On the description page for this program, you'll also find a row of variously similar games available that "People also like", just like you get suggested related items listed when you view a product on the Walmart site or a book on Amazon. Each suggested game's tile link is marked with the price. A very large number of them are free.
To the far right, above the suggestion row, there is a link to "Show all" - this gives you an even more expanded list of comparable games available. It's quite an astonishing number for certain game categories.
Besides A Clockwork Brain, some of the other popular brain exercise games offered are Zeroes, Tiles, Light House, Portable Puzzle Collection, Logicos 2, R.O.O.T.s, Treasure Maze, Kakurasu, Nonogram2, Alchemy 10, and Lost Shadow.
Sometimes it take a little help to get used to navigating the Microsoft. If you're browsing without the name of a particular game in mind, the categories can be useful.
Some of the games may not explain fully when and where to click, and sometimes they may take a little longer to load or proceed to the next screen than typical software. This is just because they use more graphics and higher resolution than other apps, so your computer processor and memory are being tapped for more computing power than usual. It doesn't take long to get a feeling for the pace of a computer game.
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