Facebook Quiz Games

Yes, it’s not often that I have time on my hands, but what with local quizzes taking a well earned Christmas/New Year lay off I’ve found a little more time than usual to play quizzes on Facebook over these last few days, and so I thought that I’d share with you some of my thoughts about the games I’ve been playing.

Triviador

I’ve posted about Triviador before. Intrinsically it’s a contest between three players. You play across a board that resembles a map of the continents, divided up into sectors. each of you has a castle placed randomly in one of the sectors. You then play for questions, with numerical answers. The closest one to the correct answer in the quickest time gets to place two soldiers on unoccupied sectors. Second place gets one. The aim of the game, then, is to win sectors by attacking those sectors adjacent to your own, and to knock out an opponent by taking their stronghold. Three correct winning answers in a row will do this. You get a multiple choice question, and if both players get this right, then you get a numerical question.

While all this may sound complicated, it really isn’t. It has a slightly addictive quality to it. It’s not without its drawbacks, though. For one thing, quite a number of the questions are supplied by players, and quality really does vary. Some of them are ridiculously obscure and/or boring. Then there’s the lifelines. You can use several lifelines during the game – if you have them – which make it difficult to lose the question. I don’t like these very much, but they are there to make money for the creators, so I can’t say anything. Finally there’s the players who seem to spend all day everyday playing. As you play your experience level rises. When you meet someone whose level is over 100, then you might as well not bother, because they won’t get hardly anything wrong, and will be so fast on the buzzer you won’t have a chance. It’s a good game though.

Quiz Show

In many ways this is a straighter quiz than Triviador. You are one of ten contestants. You face a succession of questions in three rounds, and are given three possible answers. The quicker you answer correctly, the more points you get. The last question on round two is a wager question. You choose how much of your points you want to wager on having a correct answer. Whatever you wager you double if you get it right. The top 5 players go through to the third and last round, and face three more questions. That’s pretty much it. As I say, it’s not a bad game, as it is pretty much a pure quiz. what I don’t like about it is that there seems to be a quite American bias towards the questions. It doesn’t matter how smart you are, if you’re being asked questions about US TV shows that have never aired in the UK, you’ve had it.

Quiz Tower

Only a couple of weeks ago I discovered this one. Basically this reminds me of Buzz in some ways. You’re playing in a quiz show. The idea is to answer multiple choice questions to beat the champion, and become champion yourself. If you win games as champion, then you can progress up the fifteen floors of the eponymous tower. There are some catches. For one thing you only get one free game per day. In round two you can buzz in early before the answers come up for extra points. However if you get any answer wrong in round two, you’re out. And this game also heavily leans on entertainment – in fact I would say that you won’t have anything wrong other than films, music and TV. In the last round you can double on the question. Should you be out, then you have the opportunity to take part in a ‘race’ to win another pass for the show – basically just keep answering questions as quick as you can. There are other things to mention, there are lifelines but I don’t use them so can’t really talk about them.

The thing I like least about this game is that it lets you get so far – in my case Floor 11 – and then stops you, telling you that you’ve played every quiz already. It also says not to worry because new quizzes are added every day. Utter lies. I have been having that message every day for the best part of a week now. Shame.

Superbuzzer

I just discovered this one yesterday, and I don’t think it has been going for very long. It looks like a very close cousin of Quiz Tower, and my avatar is the same for both. Basically it does exactly what it says on the tin. You play against other players to buzz in and answer a question as quickly as possible. The idea is to get through round 1 – relatively easy as 4 go through – rount two – where you have to be a little more careful because wrong answers lose points – and then win the head to head in round three. Quick right answers hit your opponent and take away their life force – 4 correct answers give you a knockout. I like this because it isn’t multiple choice, and there’s no lifelines on it yet. I played about 30 times yesterday and only lost once. In fact the only complaint is that it says that you get a free game for every game you win. Lies. Once I got to a certain level, even though it said it was giving me another credit, these never appeared for me, and I eventually ran out. Still, it has potential.

None of these are as great as Sporcle, mind you, IMHO