One of the most popular games for the Nintendo DS is Brain Age, which challenges the player with gray-matter-teasing-puzzles designed to expand one’s brain, memory, and general thought processes. Well that’s all fine and dandy for the adults and older kids, but what about the young’uns? Leave it to LeapFrog to come up with an answer. It’s called Outwit, and it was designed for the Leapster2 Learning Game (NOTE: Works with all Leapster systems).

Welcome To The Circus

The game uses a circus motif to introduce kids to 15 fast-paced puzzle games that a child doesn’t need to rely on book smarts to solve. Instead, the games use matching, memory, visualization, and sound to help children develop their thinking skills and enhance memory, speed, and accuracy. The games, and hence skills learned, are broken down into five categories that are contained in 5 small circus tents each hosted by an animal. The Kangaroo teaches Remembering through 3 games: Lunch Box Luck, In Order, and Melody Maker. The Owl teaches Visualizing by playing Scrambled Signal, Combination, and Brain Bender. With the Monkey we get Odd Ball, Doesn’t Belong, and Size Wise to teach Comparing. The Fox using the games Mix and Match, Crane Count, and Open Sesame challenges Matching Skills. Finally, the Snake tests the child’s finding skills with games like Pattern Picker, Snake Snack, and Find It. With 15 games, there is a lot of variety to the challenges. Each game has a set time limit to encourage speed and accuracy.

The Small Circus Tent Challenges

To play the game, a child picks one of the smaller circus tents and meets the really friendly animal within who explains the type of games he/she has to offer. The child then picks one of the 3 games and plays it. Once the timer is up, the game is over and the child is given their score out of a possible perfect score of 20 points. The animal then invites the child to try one of the other two games. After the second game is played, the child is then encouraged to play the final game. Once all 3 games in a circus tent are played, the animal congratulates the child and a flag is raised over that particular tent to indicate that that tent’s challenges have been completed.

The Big Circus Tent & The Main Event

Once all of the flags have been raised above the 5 smaller circus tents, the player is invited to participate in the Main Event hosted by a Mouse under the Big Circus Tent. Once inside, the player faces 5 games randomly picked, one each, by the 5 animals from the games in their respective tents. Once all 5 games have been played, the player is given a score out of a possible 100 points and awarded a Trophy to place on the Trophy Stand. Then the player is invited to practice playing any of the games in the 5 smaller circus tents or to try playing the Main Event again.

Behind The Curtain

From an analytical standpoint, the game is interesting in how it is laid out. The child is challenged in the 5 smaller circus tents where they learn how to play each of the games. Then after they have been introduced to the concept of each game are they brought in for the Main Event. Each game is designed to get tougher as it is played, thus advancing with the child’s skills. So in that respect, the game doesn’t get old. However, it was particularly annoying that there was a maximum score of 20 points per challenge. Each game has a certain level of accomplishment required to get the 20 points, but I soon discovered that I could play one of the games, get half of the answers wrong, and still get 20 points as long as my number of correct answers matched or exceeded the number required for 20 perfect points. Therefore, once the child succeeds at achieving a perfect 100 out of 100 points (even with a lot of mistakes), what is the point of playing again? LeapFrog would have done better to get rid of the 20 points max.

As far as the overall appearance of the game, it has its bright and colorful graphics, typical of Leapster Games. The animals are friendly, talkative, and very encouraging without being overly sickly sweet… A bonus in my book. The variety of games is a real plus, and the randomness of the challenges selected for the Main Event makes the game exciting.

Overall Impressions

For a child just learning to read, Brain Age for the Nintendo DS is just not going to work. Outwit for the Leapster2 is really an exciting and challenging alternative. So with that in mind, Caleb (age 5) has decided to give Outwit 10 out of 10 Stars because it’s a lot of fun to play. As for me, I was disappointed by the maximum limit on scoring, however the games ability to advance to the skill of the player kept even me challenged, so I’m giving it 7 out of 8 Dancing Elephants.

Parting Thoughts

As a parent I’ve discovered that one of the most gratifying, while at the same time scary surprises is when a child solves a brain-challenging puzzle way, way beyond their years.