Space Ship Evacuation, the game

The other day Sharon Begley's column informed us that the game Tetris exercises the same part of the brain that stores horrible images, and playing the game after witnessing horror might reduce post traumatic stress.

Well, here's a better one. Evacuation is a game that requires the player to figure out which doors to open on a space craft to eject hungry alien creatures before they can eat the ship's crew but without ejecting the crew, too. Lose the ship's captain and the game is over.

The mechanics of the game are quite simple. But the beauty of the game is that it so consumes the brain that the player can forget about just about anything from mundane choirs to really important stuff. (Don't ask me how I know this.)

So maybe this is a secret weapon. Rather than giving it to our soldiers, air drop portable games into terrorist training camps. Before long those suicide bomber recruits will be so consumed by the games that they will forget all about their holy text, not to mention their unholy missions. When the real missiles come sailing in they won't even know what hit them.