Crete programmer Fanis Kourtikakis creates still more brain-training wonders…
As we slowly emerge from a coronavirus pandemic that turned the world upside down, it’s important to reflect on what we have, and are still learning about ourselves and the way we approach life. Here in Greece, where strict regulations averted a catastrophe, people practiced collective and personal strategies to overcome. One Cretan, a programmer named Fanis Kourtikakis, transformed a lockdown and relative solitude into a useful and intelligent innovation.
For Cretan Fanis Kourtikakis, adaptability is a way of life. Like many who live on Crete Island, Kourtikakis dealt with the recent quarantine and lockdown in an introspective, but creative way. The programmer/developer best known for his success building websites and apps for digital clients, he spent the hours secluded from his normal business serving clients to build a new brain training game app called “Evolution of the brain”, or “Brain Stars Evolution” – for exercising the noodle on phones and tablets.
Kourtikakis, who is originally from Tympaki in the south of Crete, is no rookie when it comes to overcoming adversity and taking chances in order to succeed. Not too many years ago, at the onset of the world economic crisis, he was forced to search for work abroad.
While in Australia, Kourtikakis turned ingenuity and desire into a new profession when he taught himself programming in order to broaden his skill set. When the job market there proved to be as bad as everywhere else, he returned to Greece to build websites and to serve digital clients while creating several successful games and apps.
Now, with everyone looking to the future in the hopes COVID-19 may be subsiding, Kourtikakis’ new brain training app looks like another hit. The game, which is a series of brain-training puzzles that are both fun and useful.
Brain Stars Evolution via Google Play and for iOS users, is an expanded universe of brain exercises. Kourtikaki tells us he’s been refining the fun game for some months and has created the most recent levels (Version 1.07) while Crete since working under COVID-19 lockdown.
The IQ puzzle game’s development is an ongoing project now, according to Fanis, with ten or more new levels being added each week. I asked him why he thinks such quiz games are important during this crisis time.
“Every game is an escape from reality. This engaging puzzle game is a chance to learn, laugh, and have a good time, and to avoid being engrossed with all the bad news. Brain games offer everybody a diversion, whether you are a casual or hardcore gamer, or a student aiming for cognitive speed improvement.”
With the quick success of Brain Stars Evolution, which was released in the midst of the lockdown, Kourtikakis immediately set to work on the highly addictive 6 Clues IQ game for people using Android and Apple phones and tablets.
I played 6 Clues initial levels earlier this morning and could not even stop the app to answer an incoming call on my Galaxy smartphone. The game is highly customizable compared to most free apps, and I found myself getting faster and faster at solving what was, at first, very challenging word puzzles.
The game is available on Google Play here, and for Apple users here. So far there have been over 250k downloads and 3,396 have rated it nearly five-stars on Android.
Free puzzle games like Brain Stars Evolution and 6 Clues exercise cognitive functions including memory, language, planning, and speed of processing, which can in turn aid us in things like taking exams or in our everyday life tasks.