The classic colour and sound memory game, free in your browser — no download, no signup
Simon is the colour-and-sound memory game that Milton Bradley launched in 1978 — four coloured panels, each with its own tone, playing a sequence that grows by one every round. This is a free browser version with no download and no sign-up. What makes the original design so durable is that every colour has a distinct pitch, so you are remembering a melody as well as a pattern, and melody is far stickier than a list.
Press Start and watch the first colour light up with its tone.
Repeat the sequence by tapping the panels in the same order.
Get it right and the game adds one more step.
Each round replays the whole sequence from the beginning.
One wrong panel ends the game at the length you reached.
The sequence starts at one step and grows by exactly one each round; the whole sequence replays every time. The first wrong press ends the run, and your score is the round you reached — reach round 12 and you reproduced a sequence of 12. Your best round is saved in this browser.
The speed setting (900, 700 or 500 milliseconds per flash) changes how fast the sequence plays, not how the score is counted, so compare runs at the same speed.
Sequential working memory across two channels at once — colour and pitch. Because each round replays everything, the early items get rehearsed repeatedly, which is why people commonly reach sequences far longer than their raw digit span. Another memory game to try next: Magic Hat.
Simon is a close cousin of the Corsi block-tapping task that neuropsychologists use to measure spatial sequence memory: a sequence of locations is shown and has to be reproduced in order. In Corsi norms, healthy adults typically reproduce sequences of around five to six locations.
Simon lets most people go further than that, and the reason is rehearsal. Each round replays the whole sequence from the beginning, so the early items are practised again and again, and each panel also has its own tone — two codes for one item. Working-memory research since Baddeley and Hitch describes separate verbal/auditory and visuo-spatial stores, and using both is why a colour-plus-sound sequence is easier to hold than either alone.
Hum the sequence. The tones form a melody, and a melody survives far longer than a list of colours.
Chunk in threes. Twelve steps as four groups of three is an entirely different problem from twelve separate steps.
Tap back at the same tempo the game used. Rushing is the single most common cause of an error at a length you actually knew.
Say the colours quietly as they light. A verbal label plus a tone plus a colour is three encoding routes instead of one.
It is a free browser version of the same mechanic Milton Bradley released in 1978 — four panels, four tones, a sequence that grows each round. No download, no sign-up, no purchase.
Yes, this page is free to play with nothing to install and no account required. It works on a phone, a tablet or a computer.
Most people plateau somewhere in the teens on a first session and improve steadily with practice. Compare against your own best rather than a published figure — sequence length depends heavily on playback speed.
Chunking and humming, in that order. Nobody holds sixteen separate colours; strong players hold five or six chunks with a tune attached.
It is playable silently, but you lose the pitch channel, which is the biggest single advantage the game gives you. Turn the sound on if you can.
Color Sequence is the same task without the tones. It is a cleaner test of visual sequence memory, and most people score a step or two lower on it.