Brain Cheeser
The story behind the creation of Brain Cheeser
Raf Peeters, January 2014
Brain Cheeser is a new magnetic travel game I designed for SmartGames this year.
TAKE AWAY CHEESE
The object of the game is to place all puzzle pieces on the game board so that the cutouts of each puzzle piece is placed next to the cutouts of other puzzle pieces. This way you create complete holes. It’s not allowed to create half holes except at the edge of the big square. To make things more interesting, there are also 6 puzzle pieces with the artwork of a mouse. They act in a similar way as the pegs in IQ-Twist. But the difference with IQ-Twist is that you have to combine two pieces instead of 1 for each mouse. When you solve the challenge you will end up with a big square cheese with the mice looking through the holes.
A HOLE LOT OF FUN
Players are focussed on creating complete holes for the mice on the game board. But they should not forget that you often also have to create “empty” holes, especially when a challenge contains less than 6 mice. The choice to use rectangles instead of squares for the cheese was the key to create enough interesting challenges. The rectangular shape offer the right balance between limiting the number of possibilities (so that each challenge has a unique solution) and making enough variation possible in the way how they can be combined on the game board.
On the game board circles indicate the possible positions of holes created by puzzle pieces. These hole are numbered, so that it’s easier during setup to find the right position of each mouse. Each challenge has a unique solution. Challenges of the STARTER and JUNIOR levels show already the position of some puzzle pieces on the game board. Cheese pieces and mice pieces are connected magnetically to the game board to prevent unintended movement of the puzzle pieces. Brain Cheeser contains 48 challenges from easy to expert. As always, the nice artwork on the cover and inside of the booklet were made by my colleague Hans.
UPDATE
The first version of the puzzle pieces was made of a flexible, soft material. This fitted perfectly with the idea that it was cheese. But these pieces were very expensive too manufacture and they were not very durable. So the current version contains puzzle pieces made of a quality ABS plastic.
example of a starter challenge/solution of Brain Cheeser
example of a starter challenge/solution of Brain Cheeser
GAME RULES BRAINCHEESER
1) Place the mice on the numbers on the game board as indicated in the selected challenge. To get you started, the positions of some cheese pieces are shown in the easier levels.
2) To solve the challenges place all the cheese puzzle pieces on the game board, creating a big square cheese slice with the mice looking through the holes:
• Cheese pieces can't overlap mice or the edge of the grid.
• Creating empty holes is allowed by placing two cheese pieces with their cut outs next to each other. However, half holes inside of the middle of the cheese are not permitted. Half holes are only allowed on the edge of the game board.
3) There is only 1 possible solution for each challenge, which you can find in the booklet.
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