Sea Hero Quest was developed to test the navigational skills of people, but players are now raising a concern if they are likely candidates for dementia if they continue to do poorly. If the player consistently exhibits disorientation and often fails to locate the starting point, will that player be prompted for further screenings or dismissed once the data has been collected?

There is now an estimated 2.4 million people who have downloaded Sea Hero Quest, making the game the most impressive scientific experiment to date. The UK-based scientists who have developed the game have tons of data in their hands that they can use to set a baseline for the early signs of dementia.

Sea Hero Quest co-developer Hugo Spiers of the University College London presented the first round of analysis from the gaming app data to the Society for Neuroscience's Annual Meeting in San Diego. Initial findings include a baseline measurement of navigational skills based on factors like age, sex and home country as reported by Scientific American.

The Sea Hero Quest experiment has shown that players 19 years old and below have shown exceptional navigational skills, even hitting bulls eye the starting point of their journey. In fact, a good 79 percent of this particular demographic are doing well in the game.

Players 19 years old and above have exhibited a decline in performance that steadily goes down year after year. Only 46 percent of players aged 75 were able to navigate successfully. However, these findings need to be substantiated by further research in order to have a grasp if the decline can be attributed to normal aging or the onset of an underlying medical condition as reported in the Wired.

Moreover, people from Nordic countries like Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark scored the highest in terms of spatial navigational skills. Australia and New Zealand come in second while North European countries rank third. As of now, the scientists cannot offer any viable explanation to these findings.

Meanwhile, there have been some valid issues raised by players who have performed poorly in the game. These individuals fear that they may be likely candidates for dementia. It should be noted that there is yet no strong evidence to support that a player's performance in a game like Sea Hero Quest is already a signal of a debilitating disease in the near future.