Game Reviews

Qrank

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Qrank
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Like the first cup of coffee, your first intellectual pursuit of the day - whether the cryptic crossword, sudoku, or finding your phone and keys - is designed to kickstart the little grey cells and get the blood flowing upstairs.

It's exactly the sort of thing that Ricochet Labs is attempting with its free social quiz game, Qrank.

Once a day, you log in and download a selection of 20 multiple choice questions and then choose which 15 to answer. The game keeps the whole experience fresh by including topical questions taken from the today's news.

Split between seven categories - entertainment, sports, science and technology, literature, history and places, government and business, and life - each is worth 100, 200, or 500 points depending on the difficulty.

You get four questions at 500 points, eight at 200, and eight at 100. The faster you answer them, the more points you get. Throw in point multiplers, and leaderboards which rank you against friends, the rest of your country, and the world, and you have the basis of solid quiz game.

Ticking the boxes

But there are some caveats.

The game is very American in tone. Sports questions in particular are baffling for whomever finds basketball and baseball - let along college American football -a foreign language. You can still guess, but it's no fun not understanding the question.

Also, as a connected service, playing on an iPod touch is limiting because of the need for wi-fi. It would be nice to have the option to play offline. Given the connection requirement, support for region-specific questions would be nice, although this would fragment the unified basis of the game as everyone is supposed to choose from the same set.

Still, with the option to use power-ups to reveal the categories of a row of four questions, and a 'reveal' button to sniff out power-ups, there is flexibility if you want to avoid a particular topic.

Other gameplay options mean you can check how your friends answered a question, do a 50:50 split to remove two wrong answers, as well as freeze the clock for ten seconds.

Get friendly

Most crucial is the method for setting up the game's social aspect. Qrank is fundamentally social, so populating your friends list with actual friends is an vital part of enjoying the game.

This is straightforward for iPhone users or those iPod touch users with a full contacts list. You can also use Facebook Connect and invite therein, or email people directly. It's not an ideal solution for everyone, though, and the decision by Ricochet Labs not to use an existing social gaming network such as Plus+, OpenFeint, Scoreloop etc represents a missed opportunity.

Still, Qrank is a well-presented and well-mediated quiz game. Issues such as regionality, sociability, and connectivity may limit its take-up among some groups, but otherwise Qrank is worth checking out.

Qrank

Qrank is a well put together daily quiz game, although it's biased toward American players
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Jon Jordan
Jon Jordan
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon can turn his hand to anything except hand turning. He is editor-at-large at PG.biz which means he can arrive anywhere in the world, acting like a slightly confused uncle looking for the way out. He likes letters, cameras, imaginary numbers and legumes.