Face Memory is a free online face recognition memory game that runs in the browser with no download and no account. A handful of drawn faces appears for a few seconds, then a larger line-up replaces it and you pick out the ones you saw. The early levels are the ordinary version: the extra faces look like different people and a general impression sorts them. From level six the game changes what it is asking. Every wrong face is now a copy of a face you really did see with exactly one feature altered — same hair, same eyes, same mouth, a different nose. A general impression matches both of them, so the only thing that works is having noticed something specific, which is the difference between recognising a face as a whole and recognising its parts. When you pick a wrong one, the reveal names the feature that changed, so the next round tells you what to look at. Every face is drawn from a set of seven features, so no real person's likeness appears anywhere. Twelve levels run from two faces with a long look up to a six-face line-up in twelve with a short one.
How to play Face Memory
- A set of faces appears with a countdown. That is your only look at them.
- The line-up then replaces it with twice as many faces. Tap the ones that were in the study set.
- Tap a face again to un-pick it, or press Clear to start the line-up over.
- Check becomes available once you have picked as many faces as were shown. Picking too few or too many is not accepted.
- The reveal outlines every face you really saw in green, marks wrong picks in red, and labels each wrong pick with the feature that had been altered.
- On levels one to five the extra faces look like different people. From level six each one is a shown face with a single feature changed.
- Get the level's quota of line-ups exactly right to unlock the next level.
- New Faces generates a different set at the same level.
Tips
- Pick one feature per face and name it to yourself — "wide nose", "pale hair". A named feature survives a few seconds far better than an overall impression.
- Faces are made from seven features: skin tone, hair shape, hair colour, eyes, eyebrows, nose and mouth. Knowing the list tells you what to look at.
- Hair is the easiest thing to see and the easiest thing to change. On the near-miss levels, check something else as well.
- Work through the study set in a fixed order, left to right. A consistent scan turns several impressions into one short list.
- In the line-up, look for the feature you named rather than at the whole face. Whole faces are what the near-miss distractors are built to fool.
- If two faces look identical, they differ in exactly one thing — compare them feature by feature rather than glancing back and forth.
- The counts are fixed: as many faces to find as were shown, so if you are sure of four out of five, the fifth is between whatever is left.
FAQ
Is Face Memory free to play?
Yes. It runs in your browser with no download, no sign-up and nothing to buy. All twelve levels are included and unlock as you clear them.
Are these photos of real people?
No. Every face is drawn from a set of seven features — skin tone, hair shape, hair colour, eyes, eyebrows, nose and mouth — so nothing here is anyone's likeness.
What changes from level six?
Every wrong face becomes a copy of a face you actually saw with exactly one feature altered. Up to that point the extra faces look like different people; after it, a general impression matches both, so you have to have noticed something specific.
Does it tell me what I got wrong?
Yes. Each wrong pick is labelled with the feature that had been changed — "different nose", "different hair colour" — so the next round tells you where to look.
Can two of the faces I need to find look nearly identical?
No. The faces shown in the study set are always at least three features apart from each other, so the near-miss pair is always a shown face against a wrong one. Two near-identical targets would make the round unanswerable rather than hard.
How long do I get to look?
Between about three and a half seconds and two and a half, shortening as the levels go up. The countdown is on screen.
How is this different from Memory Match?
Memory Match hides pairs under cards and builds the memory over many turns. Here everything is shown once and taken away, and the question is recognition — which of these did I see — with distractors designed to defeat a rough impression.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes. Faces are inline vector drawings that scale with the grid, and the whole game is single taps.