Trivial Pursuit: Genus Edition

The naming of things is an art second only to the creation of them. For us at Pocket Gamer, harried as we are by the management's flailing whips, writing an ingenious title strapline takes as much time as a goodly proportion of the review it accompanies. Nobody appreciates a great name more than us, and 'Trivial Pursuit' is one of the greatest.

How come? Because it simultaneously insults both you and itself, managing to attract an audience whilst acknowledging that there's nothing more pointless, absolutely no pursuit more trivial, than sitting around a table and answering questions.

Despite this, Trivial Pursuit is one of the most popular board games of all time, enjoying countless editions. A steadily climbing number of these are appearing on the mobile thanks to RealArcade's sure and steady grasp on the franchise. Trivial Pursuit: Genus Edition is the latest in the series.

The premise is simple. Each player has a circular counter divided into six segments, into which they need to slot six pieces of 'pie' by throwing a die, moving around the board, and answering questions on one of six colour-coded topics. The first to get all six pieces of pie and return to the centre of the board wins.

Most of your mobile gaming probably takes place in solitude, so for the most part the whole notion of 'winning' is necessarily different from the conventional board game.

There are two game modes, Classic and Time Attack, both of which you can play alone or with up to five opponents. In the former, your final score takes the form of a percentage of questions answered correctly first time. If you're playing with somebody else, it's the first to reach the centre who wins, although the percentages are still recorded for good measure.

In Time Attack, you can similarly play either alone or in company, by means of what those in the know call 'pass-the-handset' play. Everybody has five lives in this mode, and the winner is either the last person standing or the first to reach the centre. The game generates your final score on the basis of, not only how many lives you have, but how quickly you answer your questions after the clock starts ticking.

So much for the problem of solitary play. RealArcade's mobile adaptation works fairly well, and while we raise our eyebrows higher with every edition that doesn't include wireless multiplayer, this is still a decent variation on Trivial Pursuit's inviolable formula.

One problem a video game conversion of Trivial Pursuit faces is fairly fundamental: how do you actually answer the question? RealArcade's solution is to make each answer multiple-choice. Quizmasters may baulk at the unsolicited ease this brings, but there are ways around it in multiplayer – by having somebody else read the questions – and we don't see it being an issue for the casual player.

The pitfall that all quiz games absolutely must avoid, however, is to have too few questions, and here Genus takes its biggest tumble. While it's good for a couple of rounds, you'll soon be coming across questions you've already answered, and if you play on your own more often than not the limited repertoire will run dry in no time.

Despite these disappointments, Genus scores with its presentation. RealArcade has done as much as anybody could reasonably expect of a quiz-sim by rendering the action in tumbling polygons and gliding the camera around the board to take it all in.

However, looks aren't everything, nor even very much, and while Genus has all the quality of its very worthwhile mobile predecessors, the biological smarts that enabled us to thrive on the green squares are also telling us that the franchise will have to evolve if subsequent generations are to survive.

Trivial Pursuit: Genus Edition

Despite a range of gameplay options and slick presentation, Genus hasn't resolved the niggling issues that held its predecessors back
Score
Rob Hearn
Rob Hearn
Having obtained a distinguished education, Rob became Steel Media's managing editor, now he's no longer here though.