Memory Card: Purble Place

I've never been much of a gamer; the extent of my gaming knowledge lies in the childhood games I played on our family PC. I'm talking about the classics: Chicken Invaders (like Space Invaders but with exploding chickens), Moshi Monsters and the iconic Purble Place. The latter is one of the most memorable games from my childhood, with many hours spent decorating cakes and changing little outfits for aliens, little did I know that it was helping with my cognitive development...

Picture the scene: It's circa 2010, and an excitable young girl has just returned home from a tiring day of colouring in at primary school and heads straight to the family computer to play Purble Place. The iconic home screen pops up, with 'Purble Place' written in all-caps in a font that could be Comic Sans. A purple sky canopies the green hillside, where three little houses reside.

Each house hosts a different game, and all three are intended to be educational for children, testing hand-eye coordination, memory, and code-breaking. The first of the houses hosts the game Purble Pairs, a pattern recognition game similar to Snap. You click on the clovers to turn over the squares, attempting to pair the matching sets in the shortest time possible - a fun take on a classic game.

The second of the houses, and arguably the most fun, was Comfy Cakes, a hand-eye-coordination game which tests your memory and speed. You're given a set of cake orders and the aim is to recreate them with the right base and toppings before the conveyor belt runs out. This game is similar to other cooking games of the time, including Cooking Fever (another personal favourite) which tested your concentration under pressure.

The final house in Purble Place hosts the game Purble Shop which tests your ability to recognise codes. There are three different levels for this game, in which you are given a 'Purble' (a little alien person) with a set of coloured features and must add or delete certain features to find the right mixture of features to break the code. The beginner level has 27 different possible variations, the intermediate has 256 variations and the advanced level has an amazing 3125 different variations! It's easy to understand how this game can get you hooked for hours.

So there you have it, the game of my childhood, Purble Place. It may not be much in terms of technical features or difficulty but it was a simple and fun game, perfect for my younger self. It's a bonus to know that it also helped with my cognitive development growing up!