Big Brain Academy: Brain Vs Brain is out today, bringing multiplayer brain-testing to the Nintendo Switch juuuuust in time for Christmas.
But if you’re imagining a tense and combative situation in which either your children are crying because you’re (obviously) smarter than them, or your children smugly lording it over you because you let them win and they just assume they won on merit, then fear not: Big Brain Academy has that dilemma all figured out.
In a three-part interview with three of the developers, Kenta Kubo, Tomoaki Yoshinobu, and Hideki Fuji, they discussed the making of the game, and the decisions they made to
The game uses a system to figure out which of six difficulties each player will find challenging, based on their speed when answering questions correctly. Those difficulties are made with everyone in mind, from the Sprout Class, aimed at kids of around five, all the way up to Super Elite Class, for mega-smart adults who need to prove their prowess by playing quiz games with five-year-olds.
“Although it looks simple on the surface, there’s a complicated program running in the back end that increases or decreases the class and score based on the player’s answers. I came up with a way for that to not come across to players.”
– Kenta Kubo, Entertainment Planning & Development Department
But that’s not all. The developers also aimed to make the game as friendly as possible for the younger players, making the wrong-answer noises less “negative” and offering a “Sprout Support” option for really young kids who might get upset by their questions getting harder, which makes it so that they only get “Sprout Class” questions. And they tested all of this out on real children, who visited the office to playtest the games!
Our favourite part, though, is the fact that players can choose different levels when playing against each other. That could mean that one player is Sprout Class, and another is Super Elite Class, which lets you play “on equal terms”. After all, it’s about answering questions at your own level.
“It’s often the case that when children and parents play against each other, the parents will hold back so they’re on the same level—but children are actually surprisingly good at seeing through this. So by having different difficulty levels for children and parents, it allows both of them to try their hardest.
If it’s not balanced, then the person who wins increases their class by one. And then both players can play seriously against each other.”
– Kenta Kubo, Entertainment Planning & Development Department
If you want to know what we thought about Big Brain Academy: Brain Vs Brain, check out our written review, and our YouTube review (they’re both by Alex!).
Big Brain Academy: Brain Vs Brain is out now on the Nintendo eShop for $29.99 / £24.99 / €29.99.
Has this sold you on the game? Or do you love trouncing your children at trivia games because they don’t know the alphabet, let alone the capital of Bolivia? Let us know in the comments!
