System: Nintendo DS

Publisher: Eidos

Reviewer’s rating: ***

ESRB rating: Everyone

Game type: Brain-teasers, minigames

Kind of like: “Big Brain Academy,” but more game-oriented

Best feature: Some of the minigames are really fun.

Worst feature: You may have to play minigames you don’t like in order to unlock more.

The bottom line: You may never have heard of Reiner Knizia, but he’s a towering figure in the board game world. Some of his games, including “Lost Cities” and “Ingenious,” have won awards the world over.

Knizia has collaborated with Eidos to create “Brain Voyage,” a collection of minigames in the spirit of “Big Brain Academy” and other mental challengers for the Nintendo DS.

“Brain Voyage” is more game-oriented than many such collections. Here, different cities of the world are host to different games. You simply choose a city and decide what game to play.

Las Vegas, for example, is home to a poker variant that’s half-game and half-puzzle. Cards are revealed from a deck one at a time. You have to place the cards on a grid, and you’ll be scored for poker hands on each row and each column. The grid won’t hold the whole deck, though, so you’ll have to estimate the odds of desired cards coming up as you try to form good hands.

Some of the games, though, are more like the tasks found in games such as “Brain Age.” In one that we find difficult, you have to count scattered sea creatures on the screen as fast as you can. If only “Rain Man” were there to help.