Castle of Dr. Brain

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Castle of Dr. Brain
Developer(s)	Sierra Online
Publisher(s)	Sierra Online
Release date(s)	1991
Genre(s)	Educational, Puzzle
Mode(s)	Single Player
Rating(s)	N/A
Platform(s)	Amiga, DOS, Mac OS
Input	Mouse

Castle of Dr. Brain is a video game of the educational genre released in 1991 by Sierra Online.

The game opens with a shot of a silhouette of Dr. Brain's castle on top of a cliff in the middle of a thunderstorm as Bach's Toccata and Fugue plays, a reference to the piece's use in classic horror movies. The castle is then hit by lightning and the scene lights up to show that the castle has several odd features to it, such as a dripping faucet sticking out of a wall, and the music becomes more upbeat.

The object of the game is to successfully navigate the puzzles Dr. Brain has set up in order to become the mad scientist's assistant (a position Dr. Brain had advertised in the local classified section). To enter the castle, the player must play a game of memory at the front gate. Inside, the player must solve puzzles within the hallways and rooms of the castle. There are also three mazes in which the player must guide an elevator between and among different floors.

Many of the puzzles require skill in mathematics and logic, but the game requires knowledge in a broad range of subjects. One puzzle requires the player to solve a cryptogram, and the penultimate level deals primarily with astronomy. In a rather surreal level, the player must put together a jigsaw puzzle which, when completed, becomes a room through which the player passes to go to the next level.

On completion of the game, Dr. Brain congratulates you, introduces the people who had a part in making the game, and states that more challenges will await you on The Island of Dr. Brain (the next game in the series).

The Castle of Dr. Brain featured a point-and-click mode of gameplay and three levels of difficulty, which the player could change at any time. The player could also change the pointer from a hand, which would interact with puzzles, to an eye, which would give information about an object (occasionally leading to clues to help solve puzzles). Typically, pointing the hand or the eye at an object that wasn't a puzzle would give a joke about it. The game also featured Hint Coins, which the player earned by solving puzzles and could use for assistance on puzzles they were having difficulty with.