🎵 Simon
How to play
- Watch and listen to the sequence Simon plays at the start of every round.
- Tap the colours in exactly the same order. Each tap lights up the colour and plays its tone.
- Each round you successfully reproduce extends the sequence by one more random colour.
- A single wrong tap — wrong colour or wrong order — ends the game instantly.
- Your highest round count is saved automatically as your local high score.
Simon is a colour-sequence browser game on DropPlay where players memorise and repeat increasingly long sequences across four coloured pads in exact order. Each successfully echoed round adds one more colour — and one more notch of difficulty. What made Simon the world's best-known memory game is the combination of audio and visuals: every colour both lights up AND produces its own tone, so you remember sequences via two senses at once. That also makes the game accessible to younger children and players with visual impairments. On DropPlay, Simon runs straight in the browser on desktop and mobile, with sound (mutable if you prefer) and no signup.
Tips & strategy
- Listen to the tones, not just the colours. Audio pattern recognition in humans is faster and more robust than visual memory.
- Form sound phrases. Three or four notes often shape a recognisable melody — easier to remember than “red-green-blue-yellow”.
- Use chunking: group the sequence mentally into pairs or triplets. Remembering “red-green // blue-blue // yellow” is easier than the full chain item by item.
- Close your eyes while Simon plays the sequence — relying purely on sound, sequences past length 12 are often easier to memorise.
- Tap back rhythmically and evenly. Pauses or rushed answers distract you from the actual recall.
- If you make a mistake, do not get worked up. Mental stress lowers working memory by up to 30 percent — a short pause before the next round works wonders.
History & background
Simon was launched in 1978 by US toy company Milton Bradley, designed by Ralph H. Baer (often called “the father of video games”) and Howard J. Morrison. The game was inspired by the 1974 Atari arcade cabinet “Touch Me”, whose audio Baer found inadequate — he replaced it with four consonant tones that together form an A major chord, which is why longer Simon sequences sound musical. Simon became a runaway hit within years and is to this day an icon of electronic toys — the round, four-coloured shape is on display at New York's Museum of Modern Art. In academic research the Simon paradigm is used to measure auditory-spatial memory performance.
FAQ
How many colours does Simon have?
Four colours: green, red, yellow and blue — exactly like the 1978 original. The four-colour limit is not random: it is roughly the largest set human working memory can reliably distinguish without external aids.
Is there sound?
Yes, each colour has a clearly distinct tone, and together they form an A major chord. Sound can be muted if you prefer — but playing with sound is markedly easier because the brain memorises audio sequences better than purely visual ones.
Is my highest round saved?
Yes, stored locally in your browser via the LocalStorage API. Your level record persists between sessions and is only lost if you clear the browser cache.
Is Simon free on DropPlay?
Yes, fully free and no signup required. No in-game purchases, no ads before you start.
What is the maximum sequence length a human can memorise?
Studies show a median of 14–18 colours in a correctly reproduced sequence. Top players reach over 30; the world record on the original Simon stands at more than 60 — but such performances require many hours of training and chunking strategies.
Why does the game get so hard so fast?
Human working memory capacity for sequences sits around 7±2 items. Once the sequence crosses that threshold the game gets dramatically harder, because raw memorisation no longer scales — you need strategies (chunking, audio phrases) to keep going.
Score · Best ·