Simon Review: The Memory Game That Tests Your Recall

The bottom line: a pure memory test that gets its hooks in fast, where every failed run is so clearly your own fault that you have to try one more time.

Simon is one of the oldest electronic games still worth playing, and I went into this review half expecting it to feel like a museum piece. It does not. Within a couple of rounds I was leaning toward the screen, mouthing the colors under my breath, which is exactly the involuntary focus the original toy was built to trigger. Stripping a game down to "watch, then repeat" should be boring. Somehow it is the opposite.

How it plays

You press Start and the disc lights up its four colored pads one at a time, each with its own tone. When the sequence finishes you repeat it by tapping or clicking the same pads in the same order. Nail it and the game adds one more step, so round two is a sequence of two, round three is three, and on it climbs. A single wrong pad ends the run. The version I host plays the tones alongside the lights, which matters more than you would think, because the audio gives your memory a second hook to grab. Your best round stays on screen, so there is always a number to beat.

What works

The escalation is the whole magic. The first handful of rounds feel trivial, then somewhere around seven or eight steps the sequence outgrows your short-term memory and you start hunting for tricks, chunking the colors into pairs or humming the tones as a tune. That shift from "easy" to "I have to concentrate" happens naturally, driven only by how far you got, and it is genuinely satisfying when a chunking trick lets you push past a wall. Pairing sound with light makes it more accessible too, and runs are short enough that a failure stings for about one second before you are tapping Start again. It is the definition of one-more-go.

What does not

Simon is gloriously one-note, and that is also the catch. There is a single mode, a single board, and no progression beyond your own high score, so once you have found your ceiling there is not much new to discover. The difficulty is entirely a memory wall rather than a skill you can train deeply, which means some sessions just come down to how sharp your recall is that day. And a late-run mistake can feel brutal in a way that is more about attention slipping than about being outplayed, since one missed pad erases a long, careful sequence instantly. This is a sprint, not a campaign.

My verdict

Simon earns a strong score for doing one thing almost perfectly. It is the cleanest test of working memory I have on the site, it loads instantly, and it has that rare quality where losing makes you want to go again rather than walk away. Do not come for depth or variety, come for a focused five minutes that quietly sharpens your recall. Try to beat your best round, then explore the rest of the games library for more quick brain workouts.