Foldit: Solve Puzzles and Help Medical Science
If you're looking for a puzzle game with a humanitarian cause (and I never thought I'd say that!), then you might find Foldit worth checking out. Foldit is a free game developed by the University of Washington that allows you to contribute to important scientific research while solving a series of biological puzzles. The aim of the game is to help scientists understand the function of proteins and amino acids.
Foldit requires you to solve increasingly complex protein chain puzzles with the guidance of Dr. David Baker. As you solve these connection puzzles, you earn points and rise up the online rankings, competing with players across the internet. The performance of different competitors helps scientists determine whether humans' pattern-recognition and puzzle-solving abilities make them more efficient than existing computer programs at pattern-folding tasks.
The game itself involves using the cursor to manipulate a chain of amino acids, folding the protein into its optimum shape. The only rules are based on physics, allowing you to rotate all bonds and manipulate the molecule. However, the molecule can be frustratingly hard to manipulate at times. The closer you get to the optimum shape, the more points you score.
Foldit may not be the most engaging game you'll ever play, but the fact that it's making a real impact on medical research means you're doing more than just killing a few minutes of time. It's an original concept that benefits medical research and is easy to play.
