Island of Dr. Brain - Final Rating

Written by Reiko

Island of Dr. Brain was quite the puzzle-fest, and of course, for a puzzle-lover like me, it was fun to play. However, I suspect that the parts don't add up quite the same way they did for its predecessor. Let's see how the categories compare.

Puzzles and Solvability

Puzzles! Definitely! But, like Castle, they're all individual mental puzzles, several of them classic by this point, like Towers of Hanoi. Others include math puzzles, word searches and other word puzzles, jigsaws, programming, even music and art. They run the gamut of school subjects, in fact, and many of them are quite a bit more intellectual than the puzzles in Castle.

The hardest puzzle in the game.

Island of Dr. Brain - Won!

Written by Reiko

Easy if you can read a treble clef.

In the far corner of the room, I find a piano, which launches the music puzzle. This has three stages. "Lesson 1" is Sight Reading: clicking the correct note on the piano that matches each note on the staff. Lesson 2 is Placing Notes: clicking the correct place on the staff that matches each note played on the piano, which is just the inverse of sight reading.

The given melody.

Island of Dr. Brain - Books and Balances

Written by Reiko

I just completed various language puzzles (synonyms, antonyms, and homonyms) to collect three items to place on the counterweight to a bridge in order to access the interesting hut in the corner of a robot village. Inside the hut we have a very eclectic collection of decorations, including several native masks that each have their own sound effect, a "bird in the hand", a "Coconut brand computer" (a riff on Apple, I'm sure), and a locked bookcase.

Look how similar a lot of these guys are.

When I click on the computer, I trigger the Match Three puzzle, in which I have to find five sets of three matching masks in an arrangement of thirty masks. It's rather tricky because so many of them have similar features but aren't identical, and often there are two that match but not a third. I stare at the masks for awhile and eventually manage to piece together which sets actually exist. When I find all five, I get the "Visual Pairing" plaque, and then the top face on the totem statue in the corner spits out the key to the bookshelf. Hmm. I had noticed that the bottom face, when activated, spits out a lizard that runs away. I guess that was foreshadowing, of a sort, and also the description comment that Dr. Brain considers the statue his "key to good fortune."

Island of Dr. Brain - Mathematical Wordplay

Written by Reiko

Last time we went through the first two "rooms" of puzzles, essentially, since the beach just has the polyomino door puzzle, and the jigsaw puzzle is the door puzzle for the second room. The third room presents us with a wooden bridge with several planks missing. A cliff carved like the face of Dr. Brain has a forest for "hair". The path goes through the forest and up the mountain behind it to a door.

It's not a code! It's just scrambled.

Island of Dr. Brain - From Beach to Beach

Written by Reiko

We are on the hunt for Dr. Brain's special battery for his latest secret project. His pilot has dropped us off (using a parachute!) onto Dr. Brain's private island, and we must now tackle the piles of puzzles between us and our goal. The copy protection requires that I enter map coordinates every time I start up the game, but of course with the manual that's trivial. In fact, I think the version I have has had the puzzle nerfed such that clicking anywhere is automatically considered correct.

Instructions for the first real puzzle.

Game 102: Island of Dr. Brain (1992) - Introduction

Written by Reiko

Who's ready for another Dr. Brain puzzler? It's been almost three years since I played Castle of Dr. Brain, and now it's time to hit the Island!