I own an iPad and I always find it difficult to find good recommendations for games. It is one of the fastest growing gaming platforms, coming second only to the mighty and diverse PC (which of course any moron can release a game on) and so it can be a bewildering place to look for decent titles.
Today, we have Quiz Climber, a game about general-knowledge-question-answering squirrels climbing trees.
Title: Quiz Climber
Developer: Relentless Software
Publisher: Chillingo
Price: £1.49 or free ad-supported version
Developed by Relentless Software, the guys behind the Buzz! games on the PS3, Quiz Climber taps into the oddly compelling nature of answering general knowledge questions. The aim is for your squirrel to climb up as high as he can and each time you answer a question right, he jumps up to a higher branch.
That in a nutshell is all there is to it. You have to answer general knowledge questions and get as high a score as possible, as represented by a squirrel up a tree. I’ll admit that I wasn’t exactly blown away by the concept when I read about it, but there is a clever little twist to the game. If you have other friends that play, you will see their scores and be encouraged to beat them. Also, if one of your friends beats you, you will be sent a message telling you that you’ve just been beaten.
This is a difficult challenge to walk away from. I spent the better part of a Saturday trying to beat a friend’s colossal 42 points and was delighted with my eventual 45, only to find that the scores are reset every week, meaning you can’t just get a nice high score and walk away, content in the knowledge that you’re done with it.
In order to connect with other friends, you have to let Quiz Climber sink its tendrils into Facebook, which is something that is both smart and irritating at the same time. I’m a particular breed of gamer who eyes things like Facebook integration with suspicion. In fact, as a person I tend to avoid integrating with Facebook full stop, so I would never have really discovered this feature if I hadn’t known about it because I would never in a million years allow something to hook into Facebook, but although I sense I’m not alone in this mentality, I do think I’m a rare case. As it stands this is therefore a very smart decision as you don’t have to register for anything like a Quiz Climber Account and ensure all your friends register for a Quiz Climber Account and send friend requests with personalised messages or anything like that. You just need to let it use your Facebook account and it’s already done for you.
Quiz Climber is going to be more or less compelling for you depending on how many friends you have with iDevices who also have the game but I know of one friend who hasn’t let it buddy up with Facebook and still finds the game compelling enough without being taunted by the superior scores of others and the itching desire to compete. This is a testament to the variety of questions and topics offered that scale in an appropriate difficulty curve. There is occasionally a certain degree of repetition, but instead of frustrating me, I found that this just made me realise that I’d accidentally learnt something I hadn’t known before playing the game.
All in all, I would give Quiz Climber a big recommendation. It’s got a simple yet compelling core mechanic, it’s polished until it shines and I might go as far to say that it could be the next big thing on iOS, but that’s only if a lot of people start to play it and yes, I am fully aware of how stupid that sounds.