Warning! These five Icon Pop games will drive you insane. Every day we are surrounded by logos, songs and images. Icon Pop games challenges you to remember what they are when a particular detail of those images is taken away.
1. Icon Pop Brand (free)
We see brand logos everyday on TV, in grocery stores, and in our own kitchens. Trying to remember them is the challenge. Some are easy—I drink Coca Cola almost daily, and when I see a can without the cursive words flowing across it, I have no trouble identifying it.
However, when I saw an icon with a flowery image on a brown background, I felt like banging my head against a wall because I knew what it was, but couldn't pull it from that far-away place in my mind where I store things I don't use. Answer: Louis Vuitton.
2.Icon Pop Song (free)
3. Icon Pop Word (free)
I'm currently on the easy levels, where I have to come up with names for certain jobs. A camouflage helmet is a soldier, a car with legs sticking out from under it is a mechanic—you get the idea.
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4.Icon Pop Quiz (free)
4.In this game, you have to name famous people, movie and TV shows, and characters using the visual clues inspired by each answer. In "Characters," I had to come up with the answer of an image of a spider web on a red background; Spiderman, check; a huge eyeball: Monsters, Inc, (a movie I've seen 500 times with my kids), check. This is on the easy level of course.
5. Icon Pop Mania (free)
This game is a combination of the other Icon Pop games. Name characters, places, movies, etc. On a bigger screen, like the iPad, this would be a fun game to pass around at a party.
There are five different ways for players to find the answers to icons they don't know. Spend tokens earned with correct guesses, pick up some general knowledge by using Hint, remove incorrect letters with Eliminate Keys, or use the Open Letters to figure out the right word. If all else fails, players can always Ask a Friend on Facebook or Twitter, or Reveal the answer with accumulated tokens as a last resort. These options are available on all the Icon Pop games.
Of course the first images/songs in each game are easy and make you feel good. As you go along the images are so familiar yet so disguised that it drives you crazy trying to think of it.
Though the apps are free, like me, you might find yourself doling out a couple dollars here and there for in-app purchases when you get stuck on the one that, for the life of you, you just can't remember. Another downside is that some answers require the name to be very specific. I answered "flash drive" for one image and it only accepted "USB."
So why do I play these icon pop apps if they drive me batty? Because it's fun! (and addictive!) I might have to come up with my own AA meetings for players of these games. Good luck!