Metro Memory Game

A metro map lights up your route for a few seconds: which line to start on, where to change trains and where to get off. Then the lines fade and only the station names are left. The train rides the route, and at every station where two lines meet you decide whether to change or stay on. It is the same job as remembering directions someone has just given you, and the same memory techniques help.

How to play

1. The map lights your route from START to END, with each change of train numbered. Study it before the lines fade, or press RIDE NOW when you have it.
2. The lines fade. The station names stay, and so does the track you have already ridden, so you always know where you are.
3. The train rolls through plain stations and stops wherever two lines meet. Press CHANGE HERE if your route changes trains there, or STAY if it does not. You can answer as soon as the ticker names the station, while the train is still pulling in.
4. Change at the wrong station, or miss a change, and you lose a life. The train rides a little way down the wrong track, the track you should have taken flashes, and the train comes back to carry on along the route.
5. The trip ends by itself when the train reaches END.

The route stays lit for 2 seconds plus 2.5 seconds for each change, so 4.5 seconds on the first trip. Each trip after that takes 0.25 seconds off, down to 1.5 seconds for each change. The doors stay open for 4 seconds on the first trip and 0.15 seconds less on each trip after it, down to 2 seconds, and doors that close on their own count as STAY.

Trips 1 and 2 have one change on a map of three lines. Trips 3 and 4 have two changes. Trip 5 adds a fourth line, trip 7 a third change, trip 9 the fifth line, and from trip 11 every route has four changes. A route runs from 4 to 10 stops.

On a keyboard, press C for CHANGE HERE, S for STAY and R for RIDE NOW. Escape or Space pauses, and pausing hides the map, so it cannot buy a longer look at the route.

Scoring

• A change at the right station scores 100, plus up to 50 for speed. An answer given before the doors open earns all 50.
• Staying on at a station that is not one of your changes scores 25, whether you press STAY or let the doors close.
• A wrong answer scores nothing and costs a life.
• Reaching END scores 100, or 200 for a trip without a single mistake.

Three lives lost end the game. Your five best scores are saved in this browser, with the trip each game reached. In practice, the route stays lit until you press RIDE NOW, a wrong answer costs no life, and the game never ends on its own. End it from the pause screen. Practice games are not saved.

How to remember a route

A route is a short list: a line, a station to change at, another line, another station. Lists like that are easy to lose as bare names and easy to keep as a small story. If the route changes at Market and then at Union, picture a market stall so crowded that a trade union marches in to sort it out. The story method and mnemonic links explain how to build these pictures quickly.

The map itself is made up, so there is nothing to look up and no city to know in advance. It never changes, though, so after a few games you will know where the stations are, as you would in a city you live in. What is new on every trip is the route across it.

For longer lists that have to stay in order, a memory palace holds more than a story can.

Try our other free memory games, such as Palace Run for the memory palace or Vault Heist for observation.