Games that exercise the brain seem to be a staple now for the Nintendo DS and Eidos has jumped into the fray with its own ‘Brain Voyage’. The game features the famous German board game designer, Dr. Reiner Knizia as the creator and host of your world-trotting puzzle adventures. I’m not familiar with Dr. Knizia but I can tell you the electronic version of him bears a striking resemblance to the tennis great, Roger Federer. I’m not sure if this was intentional or not but it's humorous nonetheless. Moving past the digital rendition of the host, the bigger question is whether the renown board game designer bring his A game to the DS. Well, the transfer of his board game expertise to an electronic format won’t floor you but its simplicity should keep you entertained enough to make this a worthwhile purchase.

I wasn’t expecting a lot when firing up ‘Brain Voyage’ since the graphics are nothing to get too excited about but this lack of appealing visuals fell to the wayside once I started to get into the games. A world map acts are your interface to the various city-themed games. I like the “World” concept but was a bit disappointed by the incomplete presentation. The opening screen has a rendition of the city and the game visuals are colorful enough to serve its purpose but the music is a miss when trying to maintain an international feel to the game. You can tell the developers tried to create music that fits the city but it is mostly a miss. This is important since the puzzles can really be used for any type of setting but since the game is banking on international travel, then why not feature some type of cultural tunes instead of generic MIDI filler? Most gamers will end up turning the repetitive music off, which is too bad since this is a perfect game for highlighting music from around the world.

The game styles fit in nicely for each respective city. Typical examples are Las Vegas with its poker-style card game, balancing the books in London for the Bank of England, fixing traffic control to end gridlock in New York City and memorizing musical sequences in the famous Sydney Opera House in Australia, just to name a few. The games for each city use visual acuity, memory, or mathematics as part of the puzzles. Some are timed while others allow you to take as much time as possible to figure them out. Overall, it's a good balance for beginners and advanced players. There is also a fair ramping to the difficulty for each game, which allows players to progress in a natural manner. Coins are given out for earning medals (Bronze, Silver and Gold), hitting high scores and are also periodically dished out as a reward for persistence. So again, if players are running into some difficulty, there is some recognition for those who don’t give up. I found this was a nice perk since there are some games that will take longer than others to master and it encourages you to keep trying. The accumulation of medals and coins enables you to open up new levels within each given game as well as opening up new new cities/games on your world map.

The other feature to mention is the ability to share your games with friends who have a DS. All you have to do is pick an unlocked puzzle and send it out using the DS Download Play feature. This is an okay feature but a real-time multiplayer challenge mode would go a lot further in extending playability to ‘Brain Voyag’e.

‘Brain Voyage’ is a good choice if you're looking for a simple and fun puzzle game for either yourself or a family member. I would definitely recommend it for younger gamers since it features a decent variety of games, which all have a naturally progressive learning curve. ‘Brain Voyage’ might be missing the visual flash and the cultural sounds of international travel but its gameplay doesn't skip a beat in holding your attention.