intentionally the opposite: it rewards focus, patience and clear thinking. It’s not about zoning out; it’s about re-engaging your mind in a way that feels uplifting. We want to be the antidote to doomscrolling.
Do you think puzzle games can genuinely improve cognitive skills like memory and reasoning? We’re careful not to frame it as a medical product, but puzzles absolutely exercise different brain skills: focus, pattern recognition, memory and reasoning. Players often tell us they feel sharper after playing - the same way you feel after a good walk or a few pages of a book. It’s entertainment, but it’s also a positive mental workout.
If Mindset GO! is a “daily workout,” what does that look like in practice? It’s designed to be playable in short bursts but still feel meaningful. You can get a satisfying brain session in a few minutes. The consistent rule system means you’re not just consuming levels; you’re building skill over time. That’s what makes it a daily ritual: small effort, noticeable progress.
You’ve found that different puzzle types appeal to different people. How does that shape the game? We’re seeing that players have different cognitive “tastes”, leaning more towards spatial reasoning, deduction or pattern recognition. Each Mindset relies on observation and logic to different degrees. Some puzzles lean heavily on observation, others demand deeper logical thinking, and many sit somewhere in between. The beauty of Mindset is that you can vary this ratio whilst keeping one coherent Mindset experience. It also means we can help players discover which kinds of thinking they naturally gravitate toward.
What do you mean when you say Mindset can be a way for players to learn about themselves? Puzzles can act like a mirror. Your puzzle style reflects your thinking, and over time we can show players meaningful insights: what kinds of challenges they excel at, where they improve fastest and which areas they might want to work on.
Could Mindset evolve into a more personalised “training plan” - choosing puzzles based on what a player wants to improve? That’s a really compelling direction for us. Because different Shape Sets
are designed to exercise different skills, we can let players lean into what they enjoy or deliberately target areas they want to build, like observation or working memory. It’s personalisation that actually matters, not just offering up content at random.
Many mobile games are designed to keep you playing longer. How do you think about playtime and wellbeing? We want Mindset to be habit-forming in a healthy way, like doing a crossword, not like getting lost in a feed. The best outcome would be a player who feels good after playing and comes back tomorrow because they want to, not because the game is pulling them in.
Founded by games industry veterans Harry Holmwood, Ste Curran (left) and Ed Thorley in 2021, and backed by leading game creators and investors including Bitkraft, Fabric, Concept Ventures and Games Workshop co- founder Sir Ian Livingstone, Magicave is a fully remote team of developers, designers and artists across the world.
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