Three Games to Test Your Multiple Intelligences
By: Tom Campbell
Tags: Multiple Intelligences, Howard Gardner, Game Design, Cognitive Science

My late grandfather had an IQ of 160. He definitely was one of the smartest people I knew. I remember him once saying at one of my elementary school saxophone concerts something like, “I never could play something like that for the life of me.”

Which funnily enough, is relevant to what I want to talk about today: Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence Theory.

Howard Gardner is a developmental psychologist, formerly of Harvard University, best known for proposing Multiple Intelligence Theory. He proposed it in his 1983 publication Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. This theory dismisses the idea of a single intelligence, one marked by an IQ test for example, and suggests that people have multiple intelligences, ranging from Musical to Logical-Mathematic to Interpersonal.

These intelligences include:

Visual-Spatial — The ability to visualize information, and analyze visual information.

Linguistic-Verbal — The ability to effectively communicate with written and spoken language.

Logical-Mathematical — The ability to analyze and solve problems in a logical manner.

Bodily-Kinesthetic — The ability to coordinate the mind with the physical body.

Musical Intelligence — The ability to analyze sound, rhythms, and patterns.

Interpersonal Intelligence — The ability to work with others and understand their emotions and motivations.

Intrapersonal Intelligence — The ability to recognize one’s own emotions and motivations.

Naturalistic — The ability to understand and react to nature. Proposed after the book was written, in 1995.

Game designers like to challenge players in these fields, often creating challenges that require the player’s use of their multiple intelligence. Today, I want to discuss 3 games that test more than one of these fields.

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes

One person has a bomb. Everyone else has a guide on how to defuse said bomb. You cannot look at each other’s screens. You have to keep talking, and nobody will explode.

A wonderful blend of Visual-Spatial, Linguistic-Verbal, Logical-Mathematical, and Interpersonal intelligences. This game does a great job of combining communication with puzzle-solving, and makes for one great party game.

Some puzzles are straightforward and rely on simply describing the situation at hand. For instance, the bomb defuser describes what wires are present on the bomb, the experts interrogate about their color, patterns and order, and then the disarmer cuts what needs to be cut.

The game even turns communication into a puzzle. There’s a module appropriately named “Who’s on First”, and both players have to choose their words very carefully for this one.

There’s a word on a display and six labeled buttons to press. The word on the display can read “YOUR”, “YOU’RE”, “UHH”, “OKAY”, “BLANK”, “ “, and other homophones and common utterances. The experts tell you which button label to read, with labels including “MIDDLE”, “NEXT”, “UH HUH”, and then the disarmer has to press the first button that appears in a list read back by the experts.

Beat Saber

Looking for a game that meets at least two of these three qualities? a) Rhythm Game, b) VR Game, c) Game with Strenuous Physical Activity. Beat Saber is all three. Use your sabers and slice stuff flying right at you in tune with the beat.

Musical Intelligence because it’s a rhythm game. Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence because you use your physical reflexes. Visual-Spatial because stuff’s flying right at you. Easy to describe.

Confession: I never played Beat Saber. I never sat down and watched a Beat Saber playthrough on YouTube. I’ve only ever seen clips of it in clip compilations or Twitter or wherever. But if I can say good things about a game I don’t really know much about, take it as a sign that it’s actually good.

The Witness

In this game you explore an island and solve logic puzzles. There’s also some voice logs scattered throughout the island which are readings of quotes from different philosophers and scientists.

Random aside, but I noticed all three games I mentioned don’t really have a plot. The Witness, like shards of it, but inconsequential.

Right off the bat you can tell this is a test of your Logical-Mathematical prowess. You have to draw a path on panels. The panels also have symbols on them, like black and white squares that the path must divide, or the line has to not cross over the shadows of a tree branch nearby. Not a single game mechanic is explained, and it’s up to your intuition to figure out what these symbols mean (a very Montessorian approach at tutorials).

There’s this one part of the game I frequently lament I never had the pleasure of experiencing for myself. For the sake of not wanting to write everything again, let me copy what I wrote in a discussion about the game mechanic I missed out on.

“…I wish I wasn’t spoiled about the existence of environmental puzzles. I did keep seeing them all around the game, even tried clicking on them but never at the right angles, and concluded that they’re just hidden Mickeys and Jonathan Blow is a cheeky little designer. Well they absolutely do serve a purpose, and the game tried to tell me at the top of the mountain that the puzzle I just solved looks an awful lot like that river down there. But I was told about them when my friend asked how my progress on the obelisks were going. So I completely missed out on this wonderful moment of discovery, this whole big “oh s — there’s I Spy puzzles in this game that adds like twice the amount of game”. The grandiose display of the outline of the hidden mickey puzzled swooshing through the sky and into a nearby obelisk. I missed out on that because I just was at bad angles.”

This is where the Visual-Spatial part of the game really kicks in, and my favorite part of the game overall. You can already see Visual-Spatial in places like the shadow forest mentioned prior, but then the game has you scouting the world to find anything O====-shaped, often with a bit of forced perspective.

I debated whether or not this would count under Naturalistic Intelligence. On one hand, the game’s environment is absolutely serene, lush with foliage and little abandoned houses, and over time you get to really know the world (another thing dependent on your Visual-Spatial skills). On the other hand, it’s not real nature, and you don’t really interact with the environment outside of solving puzzles to activate switches or finding environmental puzzles. I do not believe this game enhances your Naturalistic Intelligence given its artificiality, but I do recommend this game with anyone with a good Naturalistic Intelligence.