Free memory game — instant play, no signup, no download
Bomb Finder flashes bombs onto a grid for about a second, hides them, and gives you five seconds to tap every square that held one. Despite the minesweeper look there is no deduction involved: it is a visual memory test for positions. You start with a single bomb on a 4 × 4 grid; as you clear levels the grid grows to 5 × 5 and then 6 × 6, the bomb count climbs to four, and the time you get to look shrinks from 1.2 seconds to half a second. If you like it, Visual Grid Memory tests the same skill with more cells and no clock.
Press Start. Bombs appear on the grid for a moment — 1.2 seconds on the first levels, less later.
The bombs disappear and a five-second timer bar starts.
Tap every square that held a bomb, in any order. Each correct tap turns green.
Find them all before the timer runs out to move up a level. One wrong tap ends the round straight away and shows where the bombs were.
A wrong tap or running out of time costs one of three lives and replays the level with new positions. Your score is the level you reach.
Levels 1–2: 4 × 4 grid, one bomb shown for 1.2 s. Levels 3–4: two bombs, 1 s. Levels 5–7: 5 × 5, two bombs, 0.8 s. Levels 8–11: three bombs, 0.7 s. Levels 12–14: 6 × 6, three bombs, 0.6 s. Level 15 on: four bombs, 0.5 s. After the bombs hide you have five seconds to tap them all.
Finding every bomb moves you up a level. A wrong tap ends the round immediately, and unfound bombs when time runs out do the same; either costs one of three lives and replays the level with new positions. Your score is the level reached, and your best is saved in this browser.
Visuospatial working memory: holding a small set of positions for a few seconds after a very brief look. With at most four bombs the load is modest; the difficulty comes from the short viewing time and the larger grids, which make each position harder to pin down. Research on visual working memory puts its capacity at roughly four objects at once, which is why four bombs at half a second feels like the edge. For memory of positions in order, try Color Sequence; for remembering what is where across many turns, try Matching Pairs. Another memory game to try next: Gift Box.
Remembering where things were after a brief look is visuospatial working memory. In a 1997 Nature paper, Steven Luck and Edward Vogel found that people can hold only about four simple objects in visual working memory at once, and that the limit applies to whole objects rather than to individual features.
Bomb Finder never shows more than four bombs, so the load stays at or below that limit; what makes later levels hard is the shorter look and the larger grid. Remembering the bombs as one shape helps because a pattern can be stored as a single unit. As with other brain games, research reviews find strong improvement on the practised task and little evidence of transfer to everyday memory.
Remember the shape, not the squares. Two bombs make a line with a direction; three make a triangle; four make a shape you can name.
Anchor to the edges and corners. "Top row, second from the left" survives five seconds far better than a vague picture.
Count the bombs while they are showing, so you know when you are done and do not tap one extra square looking for a bomb that is not there.
Tap the bomb you are surest of first. Placing one often brings the others back, because you remembered them as a shape.
Never guess to fill the count. A wrong tap ends the round, the same as running out of time.
Levels 1–2: 4 × 4 grid, one bomb, 1.2 seconds. Give the bomb a coordinate in words — "row three, column two" — even though it feels unnecessary. The habit is what carries you through the later levels.
Levels 3–4: 4 × 4, two bombs, 1 second. Treat the pair as one line: where it starts and which way it points. Two separate points are harder to hold than one line.
Levels 5–7: 5 × 5, two bombs, 0.8 seconds. The 5 × 5 grid has a true centre square, so describe each bomb relative to it: "one up and left of centre".
Levels 8–11: 5 × 5, three bombs, 0.7 seconds. Three bombs always make a triangle or a line. Name the shape and its corner in the grid, then tap the corner bomb first.
Levels 12–14: 6 × 6, three bombs, 0.6 seconds. There is no centre square on a 6 × 6 grid, so split it into four 3 × 3 quarters and remember which quarter each bomb is in.
Level 15 and up: 6 × 6, four bombs, 0.5 seconds. Four positions in half a second is near the limit for most people. Take in the whole pattern in one look rather than bomb by bomb, and use the full five seconds to recall it before tapping.
No. Only the set of squares matters.
The round ends at once, the remaining bombs are shown, and you lose one of three lives. The same level then replays with new bomb positions.
Five seconds from the moment the bombs disappear. If any bombs are still unfound when the bar empties, you lose a life.
Only in looks. Minesweeper is deduction from number clues; here there are no clues, only your memory of where the bombs were.
From level 15 the grid is 6 × 6 with four bombs shown for half a second, and it stays at that setting from then on. Your best level is saved in this browser.
You will improve at this game and at similar position-memory tasks. Larger reviews of brain-training studies find little evidence that such practice improves everyday memory.