Pub Quiz With Friends

The quality of general knowledge quizzes are tricky to judge. As with all factoid-based games, they're easy if you know the answers and difficult if you don't.

Pub Quiz With Friends attempts to capture the feel of the traditional boozer-based pastime by filling the screen with classic pub imagery and slinging a series of multiple choice trivia questions at you.

For the most part, this strategy succeeds. The presentation is neat and simple, and the developer borrows a few tricks from popular TV quizzes to modernise the format.

However, it's the questions themselves which prevent the Pub Quiz With Friends from getting our unqualified stamp of approval.

Where Pub Quiz With Friends truly shines is in its look. From the atypical but well-rendered bar, which serves as a backdrop to the game, to the smart icons and smooth animations, Pub Quiz With Friends certainly looks the part.

The quiz is 'hosted' by a barmaid who, while artfully drawn, is displaying more cleavage than strictly necessary - a shame, considering the quality of the rest of the design.

You have the option to play solo or compete against up to six other players. This local multiplayer mode uses a pass-and-play mechanic to keep everyone involved, which suits the old-fashioned, social nature of the game just fine.

The developer does throw a few modern touches in for good measure, though. For example, there's a Who Wants to be a Millionaire-style 50/50 option, which removes two out of the four possible answers presented.

You also have the option to pass on a particularly tough question. The game allows for three passes and three 50/50s per game. You're also allocated three lives, which are depleted every time you answer incorrectly.

These modifiers introduce an extra tactical level to each round, and work well within the familiar framework of a pub quiz.

Once you get past the first round, a Quickfire mode and betting mechanic are introduced. These offer some variety to the proceedings, and helps to keep the pace lively.

However, a quiz sinks or swims on the quality of its questions, and it's here that Pub Quiz With Friends spills some of its pint on our new shoes.

There are no specialist categories to choose from in Pub Quiz With Friends. During our time with the game, we identified four recurring subjects: sport, celebrity trivia, geography, and history.

Our major issue concerns the difficulty level, and the problem of repetition. To put it bluntly, the difficulty curve for Pub Quiz With Friends is a bit wonky.

Set to its easiest level, the game would throw out occasional curveballs that seemed a little too obscure to be considered easy. Likewise, the Genius difficulty setting threw up some surprisingly basic queries.

However, given the subjective nature of general knowledge (and knowledge in general), we're prepared to give Pub Quiz With Friends a relatively rowdy cheer, and drink to its health - even if it does wobble of its bar stool every now and then.