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N-Color Back is the n-back task played with colours. A large circle shows one of six colours at a time, with the colour's name written on it, and from the third colour on you answer one question: is this the same colour as the one N steps back? You start at 2-back, and every block of 20 colours you finish moves you up to 3-back, 4-back and beyond. It is a single-stream task, which makes it the natural step between One-Back Letters and the grid version in Dual N-Back.
Press Start. The first colours of each block are shown without buttons while the game builds up the window you will compare against.
From then on, each colour asks one question: is it the same colour as the one N steps back? At 2-back that means two colours ago.
Press MATCH if it is, NO MATCH if it is not. You get one answer per colour.
A wrong answer costs one of your three hearts, and so does letting a real match go by without pressing MATCH. Skipping a non-match costs nothing.
Finish a block of 20 colours with a heart left and N goes up by one. The run ends when your hearts are gone, and your score is the N you reached.
Six colours are used. Each block is 20 colours; the first N only build the window, and after that about 40% are deliberate matches, with every other colour forced to differ from the one N back. Each colour is on screen for 2 seconds at 2-back, 1.5 seconds at 3-back and 1 second from 4-back up, with a half-second gap after each.
A correct MATCH or NO MATCH counts as correct. A wrong answer, or a match that passes unanswered, costs one of three hearts for the whole run. Finishing a block with hearts left raises N by one; your score is the N you reached, and your best is saved in this browser.
Working-memory updating: holding the last few colours, comparing the new one against the oldest, then dropping that oldest colour and taking in the new one, every couple of seconds. That replace-and-compare cycle is what the n-back task was built to load, and it is the same process as in Dual N-Back with one stream instead of two. What you can expect is to get better at n-back itself; for training memory for order rather than for a rolling window, try Color Sequence or Digit Span. Another memory game to try next: Gift Box.
The n-back task was introduced by Wayne Kirchner in 1958 to study memory for rapidly changing information: a stream of items, and a response whenever the current one matches the item N steps earlier. Colour is one of many stimuli used since; the task's demand comes from the constant updating, not from the material.
A 2005 meta-analysis of 24 brain-imaging studies of n-back found the same frontal and parietal regions active across versions, whether people tracked locations or identities, verbal or non-verbal items. A 2013 meta-analysis of working-memory training found reliable short-term gains on trained and closely similar tasks but no convincing evidence that they generalise to other abilities. So expect to get better at n-back, and treat broader claims with caution.
Hold exactly N colours and drop the oldest on every beat. Trying to remember the whole block is what makes people fall apart at 3-back.
Say the window under your breath: at 2-back, "red, blue" — then blue arrives, compare it with red, and the window becomes "blue, blue". A spoken window shifts far more easily than a picture of colours.
The small dots above the circle show the last N colours, and the leftmost one is the colour you are comparing against. Use them while you learn the rhythm, then stop looking: comparing two dots on screen is a perception task, not a memory one.
Skipping NO MATCH is free, so when the pace gets tight at 4-back, spend your attention on catching matches and let obvious non-matches pass.
Every circle carries its colour's name, so if two shades look alike to you, read the word instead.
2-back (2.5 seconds per colour). The slowest pace and the only level most people need for the first few sessions. Answer every colour, MATCH or NO MATCH, so the rhythm of comparing becomes automatic. If you lose hearts here, the problem is usually drifting to one-back: comparing with the colour just gone instead of the one before it.
3-back (2 seconds per colour). The real jump. Three items is right around the limit of what you can rehearse comfortably, and the pace is half a second faster. Chant the three names in a steady rhythm and shift the chant by one each beat; if you hear yourself saying four names, you have stopped dropping the oldest one.
4-back and above (1.5 seconds per colour). The pace stays at 1.5 seconds from here on while the window keeps growing, so chunk the names into pairs — "red-blue, green-red" — and compare the new colour with the first name of the first pair. Few people hold 5-back for long; a clean 4-back block is a very good session.
Start here if n-back is new to you. N-Color Back raises N for you after each clean block, while our Dual N-Back keeps the position stream at a fixed 2-back and lets you choose the pace instead. Both train the same updating habit.
Everyone starts at 2-back. Finish a block of 20 colours with at least one heart left and N rises by one with a fresh sequence. Your three hearts are not refilled between blocks, so the third mistake of the whole run ends it.
On a colour that is not a match, nothing: silence is a correct answer. On a colour that is a match, letting it pass counts as a miss and costs a heart.
After the first N colours of a block, about four colours in ten are deliberate matches, and every other colour is guaranteed to differ from the one N steps back, so there are no accidental repeats.
There is no published norm for this exact version, so compare against your own best, which is saved in this browser. Reaching 3-back is a solid start and a clean 4-back block is strong.
You will get better at n-back. Whether that carries over to intelligence or everyday memory is not supported by the larger reviews of working-memory training, so treat this as practice, not a treatment.