Arctic Shores Assessment 2024/25: Practice Tests & Games Guide

The Arctic Shores Test is a collection of 10 gamified tests intended to assess your cognitive and behavioural abilities in a bias-free setting. While the games may seem simple, many great candidates are left with a bitter aftertaste. The truth is that these games assess a range of traits, so to score high, you need to understand what each game measures and the expected behaviour.

Our Arctic Shores PrepPack includes accurate practice for 9 out of 10 games, offering the closest experience to the real assessment.

The primary purpose of the Arctic Shores assessment is to provide employers with a more objective and data-driven method for evaluating candidates. It reduces hiring biases and assesses true potential rather than experience or qualifications.

By moving away from traditional reasoning tests, the Arctic Shores assessment offers candidates a more engaging and less stressful experience. It evaluates a wide range of reasoning abilities along with various behavioral traits, such as emotional intelligence, decision-making, learning agility, and risk-taking.

Following is a detailed overview of each of the 10 Arctic Shores games, including the instructions, the traits they evaluate, and examples.

You will be presented with a board of tiles; the icons on the tiles will light up in a sequence. Your job is to memorize the sequence and click on the tiles in the same order. The game will end after two errors in a row.

The catch – the game is adaptive, and with every round you succeed, the sequence gets longer and harder to repeat. At some point, a new type of icon is added to the game as a distraction, and you must ignore it. 

• Memory
• Balancing automatic and controlled behavior
• Responses’ speed and efficiency to incoming information

There are two elements to ace the task: a sharp short-term memory and knowing the patterns of the sequences.

On this Arctic Shores game, you will be presented with a power generator. Your job is to produce power by clicking the buttons. The game will end after a certain amount of clicking.

The catch – every generator can both increase and drain the amount of restored power, so with every click, there's a chance that you lose power instead of producing it. 

• Learning ability
• Impulsivity
• Risk tolerance
• Pattern Recognition

To produce maximum power, you need to learn how to recognize the rules and patterns of each generator. 

You will be presented with three rows of arrows. Your job is to determine if the middle arrow is facing right or left. The game has 80 rounds. This game is a common psychological task and exists, for instance, in the Pymetrics Games test.

The catch – the surrounding arrows can distract you by turning in the opposite direction and changing shapes. As the game progresses, the arrows will appear more quickly. Pressing too early or too late is considered an error. 

• Focus
• Attention
• Problem-solving

This task is about focusing, paying attention, and blocking distractions in a stressful environment. The best way to prepare for this task is to practice these elements as much as possible. 

You will be presented with a scenario in which your team and another team have launched the same product. Your job is to set a high or low price for your team's product. The game has 12 rounds.

The catch – the outcome of your decision is dependent on the other team's pricing. 

• Decision making
• Risk-taking ability
• Learning ability
• Fairness
• Teamwork

Since both your and the other team's price will influence your reward, you must be familiar with the game's rules and teamwork factors to maximize your reward. 

For this Arctis Shores task, you will be presented with two boxes that display tickets with changing numbers. Your job is to organize the tickets in the correct order. The game has 80 rounds. 

The catch – each box has different rules for organizing the tickets. At first, the rules are presented to you during the game, but over time they disappear. In addition, everything is done under time pressure, and pressing too early or too late is considered an error. 

• Focus
• Attention
• Cognitive processing

In this task, you must pay attention to multiple variables. A practice simulation of the game will allow you to feel at ease in a stressful environment and achieve the maximal result with minimum errors. 

The Arctic Shores tests are not your traditional psychometric assessments. Each game targets and challenges a distinct cognitive ability, some of which you may not have been aware of previously.

It is common for candidates to feel that, after taking the assessment, they might have been able to show more skill had they known what they were getting into.

You will be presented with a balloon that needs to be pumped in exchange for money. At any point, you can choose to collect your money and move on to the next balloon. Your job is to earn as much money as possible. The game has 45 rounds. Many test takers are familiar with this game from the Pymetrics Balloon Game.

The catch – the balloon can burst in every pump. Once it explodes, you lose the money that you haven't exchanged, and you will move on to the next balloon. 

• Pattern recognition
• Risk-taking ability
• Motivation by reward
• Drive

The explosions of the balloons are not random, and there are several pattern probabilities for their timing. To master the task, you need to learn the patterns and how to recognize them during the game.

You will be presented with pictures of faces with different expressions. Your job is to identify what the person in the picture is feeling out of 7 optional expressions. The game has 50 rounds.

The catch – some expressions are intentionally vague, and sometimes the accurate expression is not listed.

• Emotional intelligence
• Workplace intelligence

While it may seem that this part of the Arctic Shores tests is an easy and intuitive task, emotional intelligence games can be pretty tricky. You must pay extra attention to every facial feature to get a high score on this task.

You will be presented with a code lock. Your job is to form the passcode of the lock by stopping the rotating area on the highlighted number. The game has 20 rounds; at any point, you can exit the game and continue to the next game.

The catch – the rotation speed changes in every round, and every mistake will reset the lock.

• Reaction time
• Focus

This task requires your full attention and quick reaction time, and the ability to adapt to a new pattern every few seconds. To be well prepared for this task, you must simulate and sharpen these three elements. 

You will be presented with a series of squares, each containing shapes in various shapes. Together the squares create a sequence. Your job is to identify the following pattern in the sequence. The game has 20 rounds to complete in 17 minutes. Note that this game will not always appear as part of the Arctic Shores assessments.

The catch – every change between one square to another can be the pattern – number of shapes, their location, size, colouring, the direction of their movement, etc.  

• Pattern recognition
• Information processing
• Speed processing
• Logical reasoning
• Spatial reasoning

The rules governing the series vary from one question to the next, and figuring out one sequence doesn't make the next one any easier. Therefore, the best way to prepare for this task is to familiarize yourself with the game's most common type of rules.

This is the only task not constructed as a game but as a traditional multiple-choice test. You will be presented with sets of data consisting of tables and charts. Your job is to answer the questions using the provided data. The game has a time limit of 18 minutes – one minute for every question. Note that this game will not always appear on the Arctic Shores assessment.

The catch - the data presented can be highly complicated and requires complex calculations in a very short time. 

• Information processing 
• Numerical reasoning

As with any numeric problem – practice makes perfect. Therefore, you should simulate the task by solving as many similar numeric questions in a limited time. 

Arctic Shores have taken a unique approach to a psychometric assessment:

The Arctic Shores Test is accessed through an app called Skyrise City. Appropriately for a game-based assessment, the app design and interface are rather reminiscent of a mobile game, except that it can only be accessed with a username and a password which your employer will provide and will be valid for a limited time.

In the app, the Arctic Shores Games are all contained within an imaginary space called Skyrise City - hence the name. 

Specific high-profile customers will have their own Arctic Shores apps, named something other than Skyrise City. Several apps administer the test, including Skyrise City and Arcadis Challenge. In addition, customized versions of the test are administered by individual companies, such as KPMG, Metro Bank, and PwC.

The app can be downloaded on desktop (Windows and Mac), and all recent iOS and Android phones. This makes Arctic Shores one of the few psychometric assessments that can be taken on mobile. this is unusual with traditional aptitude tests and even other gamified assessments.

After completing the assessment, you will receive a profile report that encapsulates your unique psychological traits. The report is generated from thousands of data points measured during your assessment and given to employers.

The data points reflect your approach while taking each task. They are used to calculate your score across 34 personality and cognitive traits, such as resilience, creativity, learning agility, information processing, and emotional intelligence. The traits are organized into five sections – Personal Style, Cognition, Drive, Interpersonal Style, and Thinking Style.

Your characteristics are presented on a scale that reflects your tendencies against data collected from a large comparison group.

To really ace your hiring process and show recruiters your true potential, here is a handful of helpful tips to achieve success on the Arctic Shores tests:

Even though it looks like a game, the tasks are not games but rather gamified assessments of your natural traits. Do not presume you know what to do, even if you are an experienced gamer. Read the instructions carefully before starting the task.

Practice the games beforehand, and understand every game, what stands behind it, and what traits it measures.

Set up a quiet and comfortable area where you will not be distracted and disturbed. Ensure your keyboard is working properly and your Internet connection is stable. 

The eventual goal of the Arctic Shores game is to find out whether you are a good fit for a particular job. That will influence the way you behave in games. Remember that the level of emotional intelligence, risk-taking, drive, etc., expected from you will depend on your job, so there is no “one-size-fits-all” to pass the Arctic Shores test.

Game-based assessments are a relatively new type of psychometric assessment. While traditional assessments measure cognitive abilities such as logical reasoning, spatial reasoning, and personality traits through self-report questionnaires and aptitude tests, game-based assessments gauge these same capabilities in a more subtle and dynamic way, without right or wrong answers. This allows candidates to be more engaged and employers to offer less stressful recruitment processes.

• Pymetrics
• Aon SmartPredict
• McKinsey Problem Solving Game
• Cognify
• Emotify
• Shell Assessment
• HireVue

• SHL
• Predictive Index
• Cut-e / Aon
• TestGorilla
• Criteria
• Watson Glaser
• Korn Ferry / Talent Q

We at JobTestPrep find the assessment tests world highly diverse and fascinating. If you are looking to deepen your knowledge in the aptitude tests world, or you want some extra practice before your test, we've got you covered!

Check out these fantastic free practice tests (all are completely free):

Free Aptitude Test | Free Psychometric Test | Free Numerical Reasoning Test | Free Verbal Reasoning Test | Free Cognitive Test | Free Critical Thinking Test | Free Abstract Reasoning Test | Free Spatial Reasoning Tets | Free Personality Test | Free Inductive Test | Free Mechanical Reasoning Test