Brain Show Review

 Brain Show is a quiz show-like game developed and published by Simplicity Games. You’ll compete with up to 8 other players to prove who’s the smartest of the bunch! Managed to rope a friend into playing with me, so let's start off with profile creation before we dive right in.

It's pretty quick and easy to do. Select a name and a character, and you should be good to go. You can’t input your own name since the announcer is able to speak and refer directly to players, but at least there’s a decent selection that even includes mine, as well as some fun ones. Still, to all the people named Ursula or Usain, you won’t find anything starting with the letter U. Also, no non-binary option, which is a shame.

Now, you can play the game using controllers, keyboards, and the Steam Remote Play Together feature. However, getting it set up for the first time, we ran into a few issues. When my controller disconnected, the game didn’t like that and just stopped working. I could hear noises, but nothing was happening on the screen. Using the keyboard was fine, but the buttons shown on the screen weren't clear enough, and it took an embarrassing amount of time to figure out what the confirm button was. It did eventually work fine, and we didn’t run into any other issues, so maybe it was my own stuff, but it’s something to note if it is an issue with other people.

Anyways, onto the actual game. After a quick intro from the (somewhat annoying) announcer, the game goes into full swing. A full-length game consists of six rounds, with the first five having randomised game modes which can range from betting your points, eliminating players one by one, or just being the fastest to get the right answer. It’s pretty fun, and there was definitely some shouting and trash-talking as we played. The final round is all about being the last one standing, where your points translate to health. Get a question right, and you get to choose who to shoot. Get it wrong, and you’ll be shot. It’s a good equaliser, and there were definitely chokes and close calls as we fought to the end. It was pretty fun overall.

Onto technical performance… nope. Nothing to write home about. Although there were no major problems, I did encounter some small issues. Questions are read out with text-to-speech, which is fine as it did its job, but one or two questions had grammatical mistakes, and it doesn’t pronounce some words all that well. Always go back and proofread your writing, folks. It does wonders.

Overall, Brain Show is a pretty good party game to break out during social gatherings. There’s nothing special about it, but it’s novel, and the more players, the more fun it is. It's recommended if you’re looking for something to do on a Saturday night with friends and family.