Aardvark Puzzle Trivia 2 – Review
By App Type: Uncategorized
Our rating: 
By: Aardvark Fun
Version #: 1.0
Date Released: 2009-12-18
Developer:
Price: 1.99
User Rating:
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I’m a self-styled trivia fiend. I love knowing about the little, interesting things on a wide variety of topics and I feed on bits and bytes of information, however useless they may be, from a long list of sources. I’m also crazy about words. It gives me great pleasure to learn new words, their meanings, their etymologies, their uses. It’s no wonder then that I love games that combine these two inclinations of mine. Add another staple in my list of favorite things–the iPhone–and you have a winning recipe for a portable, handheld game that a lover of words and trivia will also love. Or do you?
One such game that I had the chance to try out quite recently was Aardvark Fun’s Puzzle Trivia 2, presumably the sequel to the first edition of Puzzle Trivia. Puzzle Trivia is so named because it is just that–a puzzle game that involves trivia, and then some. The basic gameplay consists of a multiple choice trivia question and, provided you answer the question correctly, a Hangman-type puzzle round. The multiple choice portion asks trivia questions taken from various topics and fields of knowledge, from information technology to foreign language filmmaking to Formula One racing. A countdown timer figures in this part of the game and you can select and change your answer among the given four choices within the alloted time, awhile a couple of the wrong choices are eliminated one at a time before the timer runs out. Bear in mind, though, that the sooner you choose the correct answer, the more points you’ll be awarded–a directly proportional sort of scoring that I think adds to the challenge of the game.
What I consider to be the defining attribute of Puzzle Trivia, though, lies in the puzzle round that follows a correctly answered multiple choice question. As mentioned, this round is patterned after Hangman, but here’s the twist: you can only guess the words in the puzzle using letters that make up the answer to the previous multiple choice question. Pretty clever, huh? So if, for example, the answer is "STEPHEN KING," you can only select one of the following letters for your shot on the puzzle: S, T, E, P, H, N, K, I, and G.
After making a stab at the puzzle with your chosen letter and waiting for any matches to be revealed, you can now try to solve it by typing your answer or you can pass and answer another multiple choice question. One round of Puzzle Trivia allows up to ten multiple choice questions only; after the tenth question, it’s now or never as far as the Hangman is concerned. One thing to keep in mind when typing your answer to the puzzle, at least in this current version, is to use ALL CAPS. I’ve discovered that when entering my answer using only lowercase letters, which is the default setting for the iPhone’s virtual keyboard, the game interprets my answer as a wrong one even though I’m a hundred percent sure that I got the spelling right. This hole should be already patched by the next app update.
Being the kind of person that I more or less specified in the beginning of this review, I enjoyed playing quite a few rounds of Puzzle Trivia, and will definitely come back for more when I’m free to play. The gameplay is tried and tested, the trivia questions are comprehensive, and apart from the visuals coming off bare and boring, the game is interesting enough to engage fans of words and often useless trivia.
Quick Take
Value:Medium
Would I Buy Again:Yes
Learning Curve:Low
Who Is It For:People who, like me, fancy playing word and trivia and puzzle games.
What I Like:The neat twist on the classic Hangman game.
What I Don't Like:You need to type your answer to the puzzle in capital letters, although I don't see why the default lowercase won't do. Also, the game looks really plain.
Final Statement:I would give this hangman-trivia puzzle game an A.
