Power of 10

When it's up against so many games that are better known in the UK - like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Bullseye and Deal or No Deal - it's difficult to imagine Power of 10 won't struggle a bit to get noticed.

Conceived in the US, the game show - a sort of cross between Millionaire and Family Fortunes - never actually made it here. According to the all-knowing Wikipedia, there was talk of ITV buying the concept, but then it went with Nick Hancock in the agonising drawn-out quiz that was Duel instead.

Power of 10 isn't bad, though. It's split into two rounds: in the first you go up against another contestant, each of you trying to predict how people voted in response to a series of questions.

The person who guesses closest wins a point and the first to three points goes through to the second (virtual) money winning round.

All of the questions are based around percentages. So you might be asked, 'what percentage of men believe there is life on other planets?' You then move a marker up and down from 0 - 100 per cent to indicate your guess. In the case of the first round, the contestant who guesses closest wins a point.

The second round however works a bit differently. You're asked the same sort of questions, but the first one you have to guess correctly by setting a 40 per cent sized marker over the right answer, the second it shrinks to 30 per cent, the third 20 per cent, and the final one 10 per cent.

As well as using your own gathered knowledge of human idiocy, you also have two lifeline style choices - an Ask the Audience, which gives you a graph of what they think the answer is, and an Ask a Friend, where a random AI pal pops up with a guess.

As a gameshow, it's quite good fun. And it's translated well onto mobile in most ways. For instance, you can create a contestant before you start to make them look however you like, and the studio looks very slick.

The concept works well on mobile phone, too, since all you need to use is 'up', 'down' and 'enter' buttons in addition to your brain.

There's a few foibles though. The first is that the people surveyed for the game's questions appear to be American, going by questions like 'what percentage of men have faith in the justice system?'

Not being in America, it's difficult to guess the answer. In the UK, I'd guess quite a high percentage of men would have faith in our legal and judicial system, being, as it is, brilliant. In the US though, it seems they're not quite so keen.

Some questions are a bit too sensitive to the timeframe they were asked in. Like, 'what percentage of people believe first-time buyers are being squeezed out of the housing market?'

I won't give away the answer (for a very good reason I'm about to go into), but it's not nearly as high as I'd have thought if applied to the current UK housing market.

The other problem is there's not nearly enough questions. I got a couple of duplicates in my third game and, since there are only about ten questions in total for an entire game, that's not a great sign.

As in any quiz game, duplicate questions are fatal. Power of 10 isn't a long-lasting experience. That's why I'm not going to give away any answers here. If I did, and you buy the game, I'd probably be shortening it for you by, I'd guess, 5 per cent.

Power of 10 isn't bad for a quick play. And it comes with a decent two player, pass-the-phone mode where you both play the first round and the overall winner is declared at the end.

The concept and presentation are good, which should have made for a decent game, but the lack of questions lowers the end score.