I suffered head trauma several years ago and lost a lot of long term memories and my short term memories suck. my dr recommended a book. In it the author recommends playing video games about 30 minutes a day to increase cognitive function. I know absolutely nothing about video games, I don't want to start with something hard. Suggestions?

Thanks

Free suggestions with variable difficulty:
blinken, xboard, kmahjongg, pairs, kmines, open arena, warsow. Trick and Treat - Visual Novel (haven't tried)

Non-free:
Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 6, Final Fantasy 7, Super Mario Bros (1-3+world), Doom. There are free games available on steam, GoG, and humble bundle sometimes. Its hard to say because I don't know what you'd like nor the system(s) used.

Did the book recommend any specific video games as particularly therapeutic, or provide footnotes/appendix with citations to the original studies?

Do you have any hobbies or interests? Do you enjoy any of the following: cards, puzzles, words/vocabulary, strategy, action, sci-fi, fantasy, driving, flying, simulation, world-building, etc.?

Your first resource for finding free/open-source games should be your distribution's repositories. (For example, if you are an Ubuntu user, you'd go to the Ubuntu Software Center and search the Games category.) For additional games outside the repositories, it's hard to beat Steam. Their library of games is well-organized with ratings and reviews: http://store.steampowered.com/

Steam and GOG should work well with Ubuntu and as the board is reporting your user-agent as ubuntu, I am assuming that is what you are asking for. Both steam and gog allow you to filter games by OS.

Does the book by chance give a recommendation to the types of games you should play? For example, perhaps action games or puzzle games?

No it doesn't I used to do the new york times crosswords but that's definately out of the question. As far as what I like when I watch tv and movies I like action/adventure, some sci-fy (in my experience it's either very good or very bad), some fantasy. That's about it.

As far as hobbies computers are about it. I used to read a lot but now I have trouble concentrating. I also have physical problems which prevent me from doing one of my favorite things which is exercising.

thanks

Hi...

From personal experience, my first piece of advice is to be careful what kind of games you get into. Not all of them are spiritually "healthy" or life affirming. Games that depict violence (war games that include graphic bloodshed, etc.,) and the occult (magic, sorcery, etc.,) are two such examples. Please also be aware that video game addiction is a problem some folks struggle with, so it's something to keep an eye out for, as well.

That said, one of the things I like about Linux is its sheer volume of free games. Here are some ideas of ones that I've played...

1. AisleRiot Solitaire
2. Dreamchess
3. FLTK Checkers
4. Emilia Pinball
5. Frozen Bubble
6. Connectagram
7. Klotski
8. GRhino
9. FlightGear
10. SDL-Ball
11. Phlipple
12, Pentobi
13. Four-in-a-row
14. Neverball/Neverputt (a friend and I used to play Neverputt a LOT! )
15. Gnujump
16. Hex-a-hop
17. Hexalate
18. Solarwolf
19. Zaz
20. TecnoballZ
21. Trigger-Rally

There are many others to choose from! Most of the ones above are puzzle games that might help with cognitive function.

Regards...

well maybe it's worth looking up a few titles on steam or gog, going somewhere like youtube or twitch and seeing if any of the games you look at interest you or not. If they provoke interest give one or two a try and see if you like it. If not then maybe try a different genre of game.

Sorry to hear. I'd start with Tetris and Pacman like games. Think of fitting shapes together, pattern recognition and mazes, that seems to be some good cognitive workout. There are many clones available.

Wut.

3 members found this post helpful.

I don't like blood and guts or war. As far as getting addicted there was someone I met in an irc channel that became so addicted he stopped going to his college classes and it was a very expensive school. He wound up getting kicked out and he had a lot of debt. Besides I get bored easily.

I don't even know where to start. Do I have to install? I'll try googling gog and steam.

Thanks to all of you

Well if you want to try basic games, there are lots of those around, http://html5games.com/ has a few that should work in most modern web browsers and given it is html5, platform independent. just have to put up with some adverts.

For higher spec games, Portal 2 is probably considered the best puzzle game around, that is a full immersive 3D game and naturally costs money. It is also light on blood and has no other gore.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks. I'll give it a try in the morning when my mind is fresh. My daughter says I have an expiration time during the day.

Kingdom Rush (on Steam) is super-fun, works great In Linux, and is perfect for 30-minute play sessions.

maybe something like supertuxkart or extremetuxracer would be good? spacial navigation, easy 3d...
esp. supertuxkart can be set up so that it is very easy at the beginning.

A web search for "games for short-term memory loss" will turn up a number of articles. Some of them, natch, are little more than marketing. Keep some grains of salt on hand as you pick which ones to read.

I glanced at a few of the articles and the trend seemed towards thinking and strategy games, not towards first-person shooters, blowing stuff up games, and action games. Most Linux distros offer many thinking and strategy games in native Linux versions (solitaires, puzzles, soduku, and the like). You should find a number of games in the Debian repos (per your user agent icon).

Good luck.

1 members found this post helpful.

Hi...

Yes. For the games I mentioned and assuming you're still using Kubuntu, simply open up the package manager this distribution uses, "Muon Discover," I think, look up the title names and install them from there.

Regards...