The Great Bible Game

These days, at around the time godly folk are mentally preparing their posteriors for the incoming sermon, I'll most likely be sloping out of bed and into a hangover. However, things weren't always so. There was a time, in my more youthful days, when I'd be there, cruelly snatched away from cartoon-viewing for a spell in church or, more frequently, Sunday School.

Such youths learning about the bible and other such christianical endeavours are The Great Bible Game's core demographic. If you're not learning about the Bible, or at least pretty darn familiar with it, you might as well stop reading now and presume this review ends with a 2/10 score, because this game isn't for you.

It's not a game with which to ease yourself into the Bible's various narratives, and this isn't the alpha course for your handset. What it is, though, is an Old Testament-based quiz designed to be used alongside either reading the thing itself or wider learning.

There are two main single-player game modes. Training offers just a quick quiz of ten questions that you have two minutes to answer. The main mode, meanwhile, sees you work through different rounds of questions.

It starts leisurely, the first round containing just four questions, but the time limit decreases and number of questions ramps up as you progress. At the end of each round the 'prophet' tells you how many points you've earned and whether you've answered enough correctly to progress.

This prophet character is a white-haired, heavily bearded chap dressed in the Jerusalem chic style. He's the animated figure that relays each question and also taps the screen with his walking stick if you don't answer quickly enough. Although a superficial addition to the game, it's these sort of charming visual features that make The Great Bible Game worthwhile.

There isn't a huge selection of of questions, though, with only 200 – most other quiz games we look at level out at around the 1,000 mark. To jazz up this relatively small selection, there are images. Since it's the Old Testament we're dealing with, there's actually some good source material for these, such as the tale of the Splitting of the Sea and Noah's Ark.

There aren't separate images for every single question –there's just not enough room to do this in a mobile game –but there are enough to stop them from becoming too familiar too quickly.

As for the questions, they don't pander to the player, featuring some pretty in-depth posers that would, I expect, tax even the fairly devout. They're the sort of things that Old Testament learning materials harp on about, though, so once again it's well-judged for the intended audience.

The Great Bible Game should only really be considered by this intended audience. This is Bible trivia for those who rate it as one of their 'favourite books ever'. If you are in this niche, the visual additions and tailored questions make this title entertaining enough to be worthwhile.