Mimic

Four colored pads each light up with their own tone. The game plays a sequence, then it's your turn to repeat it exactly. Each successful round adds one more step to the pattern, so the sequence keeps stretching until your memory slips.

• Watch and listen to the full sequence before you respond.
• Tap the pads back in the same order to advance to a longer round.
• A single wrong pad ends the run, your length is your score.

• Desktop: click the four pads, or use keys 1-4 / Q, W, A, S; Enter or Space starts.
• Phone & tablet: tap the pads directly, fully touch-friendly.

• Use the tones as much as the colors, pairing sound to position locks the pattern in deeper.
• Chunk the sequence into small groups of two or three to remember long strings.
• Don't rush your input; the clock isn't against you, only your accuracy is.

Mimic recreates Simon, released by Milton Bradley in 1978 and designed by Ralph Baer and Howard Morrison — Baer having already built the first home games console. It was inspired by an Atari arcade machine called Touch Me, which Baer thought had the right idea and terrible sound.

A ring of four panels lights in a sequence you repeat back, one step longer each round. That is the entire design, and its cleverness is in the tones: each panel plays a fixed musical note, so the sequence is remembered as a melody rather than a list of colours. Players who hum it get much further than players who recite it.

Mimic is an original take on the repeat-the-sequence memory toy, free to play instantly in your browser.

A free, original browser game on PlayPendium. No download, no install.