Big Brain Academy – Brain vs. Brain

Big Brain Academy: Brain vs. Brain is the third entry in the Big Brain Academy series, released on December 3rd, 2021 for Nintendo Switch. It contains many activities returning from the first two games, a customizable avatar with unlockable clothing, more difficulty modes, and a greater emphasis on multiplayer. A demo version was released on Nintendo eShop on November 16th, 2021. Big Brain Academy: Brain vs. Brain features a total of 20 activities. All of them originate from the first two games, and they are divided into the same five categories as Wii Degree. There are 6 difficulty levels for each activity. In Practice, the player can choose any of the activities to practice.

Practice activities no longer have multiple difficulty modes, instead, the difficulty class automatically increases or decreases based on the player’s performance. Each practice session lasts for 60 seconds, and the player can recieve a Lobe Medal based on their Big Brain Brawn score. Unlike in previous titles, medals (besides the Platinum one) are now seperated into tiers of 1 to 3 stars. There is only one tier in the Bronze one. Super Practice is unlocked after getting at least a 1 star Gold Lobe Medal on each activity in Practice mode. Super Practice is a harder version of Practice mode where each activity starts at Advanced Class. Every activity has the word “Super” added to the beginning of its title, to distinguish between them in Rankings.

In the Test, similarly to the original Big Brain Academy, the player participates in one activity from each of the five categories. After the test, Dr. Lobe gives the player their Big Brain Brawn score, a letter grade, and their brain type. In Ghost Clash, the player can race against ghosts of players around the world, their friends, or other users on the same system. They can also enter a Ghost ID to race against a specific player. Ghost data is created from every player (with online features enabled)’s high score on Practice and Test activities, and the player is able to race against the data similarly to the multiplayer mode. If the player wins, they unlock a new greeting that will appear when their ghost data is challenged.

Playing solo modes rewards the player with coins. Whenever 10 coins are collected, a random accessory is unlocked for the player’s customizable avatar. It can be clothing, headwear, or a face accessory. There are 300 accesories in total, and the main menu displays what percentage of them the player has collected thus far. In Party mode, up to 4 players can compete against each other in 1-5 rounds. If there are two players, they can play using touch controls on the same system. Each player can choose their own difficulty class. Each player can select their student if they have a user on the system, or as one of four guest characters. There are two modes, Choose a Category and Spin the Wheel.