How to Play Focus Chain: The Number Chain Attention Game

Focus Chain is an attention drill dressed up as a game. Sixteen numbers are scattered across a four by four grid in no particular order, and the whole task is to tap them in sequence: 1, then 2, then 3, all the way to 16. Nothing is hidden, nothing moves and there is no trick to work out. The only thing standing between you and a good time is how quickly your eyes can find the next number.

It is the same exercise as the trail making tests used in clinics to measure visual search and processing speed, which is why it feels harder than it looks written down. Most people finish their first board somewhere near a minute and are under thirty seconds within a handful of goes.

Play Together turns it into something a team can do on a call, in either of two shapes. Play as a Chain puts everybody on one grid and passes the turn round in join order: the first player takes 1, the second takes 2, the third takes 3, and back to the first for 4, with one clock and one medal for the whole room. Compete on One Board does the opposite - everybody gets the identical grid on their own screen and the fastest time wins.

How to play Focus Chain

1. Choose Play Solo for your own grid and clock, dealt the moment you press it, or Play Together to play with other people.
2. Play Together asks which kind of group game you want: Play as a Chain opens a room for two to ten people taking the numbers in turns, or Compete on One Board hands everybody the same grid to race on their own screen.
3. To compete, take a New Board and pass the code on its result screen round, or pick Same Board and type in the code you were given. The same code always rebuilds the same grid.
4. Tap the numbers in ascending order, starting at 1. A correct tap crosses the number off and the grid waits for the next one.
5. Tapping any other number does nothing at all. The chain does not move, nothing you already found is taken back, and the run carries on. The only cost is the second or so it took.
6. The clock starts the moment the grid appears, so there is no free look at it first. It stops on 16, and the result screen comes up on its own.
7. In a room, the host shares the link or the six character code, then starts the chain once at least two people have joined. Only the player whose turn it is can tap; everyone else watches and gets ready for theirs.

Strategy and tips

• Look for the next number while somebody else is still tapping, or while your finger is travelling. The search is the slow part, not the tap.
• Scan in a fixed pattern rather than letting your eyes wander. Sweeping row by row every time is slower on any single number but far more reliable over sixteen of them.
• Do not chase a number you cannot see. Glance at the rest of the grid and come back to it; the second look almost always finds it faster than staring does.
• Wrong taps are free apart from the time, so tap the moment you are fairly sure rather than confirming first. Hesitation costs more seconds than a miss does.
• In a room, remember your placing rather than counting the numbers. Knowing you are third means you can work out which numbers are yours and start hunting two turns early.

What makes Focus Chain different

A wrong tap is genuinely ignored. Almost every timed game here charges you for a mistake; this one does not, because the seconds it burned are already the penalty, and charging twice would turn a game about looking quickly into a game about not touching the screen.

There is no daily puzzle, on purpose. Instead every board carries a code, and the same code always rebuilds the same grid. That makes any board raceable the minute it exists rather than only on the day it happened to be the daily.

Multiplayer comes in two shapes that measure different things. The chain is turn based, so nobody can win it by being faster than their own team - there is one clock and one medal for the room, and what it really measures is whether everybody was paying attention when their turn came round. Competing on one board is the straight race, and it needs no room at all: just the board code.

The result screen names who tapped each number. A shared time says how the room did; the credit list is the part people actually argue about afterwards.

Frequently asked questions

More to read

• Quick games for standups: five-minute team games: Short enough to fit in the gap at the top of a standup without becoming the standup.
• Free browser games to play with your team, no signup: Games that start in one click, work on a call, and never ask anybody to make an account.