Trivia Crack Hands On Review: Addictive as Flappy Bird, Social as Words with Friends, and a Missed Opportunity for Something Greater

It's the latest game sweeping the App stores: Trivia Crack features a winning combination of social media, anonymity, asynchronous play, a fun, bright interface and, of course, addictive trivia. It also pushes ads, sharing scores on social media, user-generated content and limited play time with in-app purchases necessary for players to keep going or gain extra advantages -- also a winning combination, but for the publishers, not the players.

That sums up the push-pull of Trivia Crack, a game that's become viral on both Android and iOS, delighting many and infuriating others, and our pick for this week's Tap That App Tuesday.

The Basics

The most popular hit games for smartphones and tablets generally tend to have the easiest learning curve for average users. Trivia Crack is no different; the least technically savvy person you know will be up and running in minutes.

It's easy to sign up through Facebook, but to its credit, Trivia Crack gives you a hassle-free method of signing up with your email account as well. Once you're in, you get right to playing your first game -- either against friends you know or randomly assigned, variously anonymous opponents.

The gameplay is basic: answer as many questions correctly as you can in a row. Like Trivial Pursuit, questions come in categories. Trivia Crack offers Art, Entertainment, Geography, Science, and Sports trivia. Once you miss a question, your opponent has a chance to take their turn. They have up to two days to respond, so be prepared to wait for a while.

Again, like Trivial Pursuit, the game is over when one player has dominated all categories, gaining characters that represent each in the app.

(Photo : Google Play)

Anything involving trivia, plus the sound and visual rewards for answering correctly, is addicting. Winning against opponents just adds more habit-forming reinforcement to the whole system.

The Annoying Parts 

But there are some flaws in Trivia Crack -- both by design and an unfortunate result of design -- that might frustrate you, leading to a quick uninstall before you have the chance to play more than a couple of rounds.

First, the difficulty level (or lack thereof). Trivia Crack is based on trivia questions crowd sourced from users and intended to rope in the average smartphone user. As the saying goes, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, and Etermax (the game's publisher) knows that rewarding new users for answering questions correctly -- no matter how brain-numbingly easy they are -- is the best way to retain them.

And so the first few dozen trivia questions I was faced with as a new user were incredibly, stupidly easy. But that's not the only problem with the difficulty level. As the game progressed, I got a sense that the pool of questions might have been ratcheting up, but the difficulty level of the trivia questions remained frustratingly uneven.

In my last match (ever, probably), I was presented three questions in a row that begged the old game of "one of these things is not like the other." See if you can spot the one that doesn't belong:

"Joyce Carol Oates' Novel 'Blonde' was about which of these people?"

"Idaho is famous for which of the following foods?"

"What is the abbreviation on the periodic table for Meitnerium?"

Marilyn Monroe, potatoes, Mt. That's just one example of scatterbrain nature of Trivia Crack's difficulty settings. The user-generated questions might be free content for Etermax, but the system leads to questions that are far too esoteric and, dare I say, "trivial" -- "Which artist created the poster art for Minecraft?" Who, besides a certain small group of enthusiasts, would know or even care? -- along with questions that are too easy and some that are just badly written.

Second, the advertising, sharing and in-your-face in-app purchases. Trivia Crack has to make money, so they advertise in between correct questions, alternating those full screen ads with "share" options to help publicize the game.

Both tactics are fine and expected for free content. Everyone uses ads and wants you to help their visibility online (follow us on Twitter @LatinPostTech!). But Etermax has the timing of its splash screens down to a science, forcing you to hit the "share" button or advertisement when you're looking to continue playing.

It's a bit much, considering you actually have to pay a dollar to continue playing if you've used up too many "wrong" answers or finished too many of the allotted matches for the hour. And you will -- I had to wait for 48 minutes after a whopping 12 minutes of gameplay, because I won't pay to continue playing a game with advertisements. You can buy the "premium" ad-free version of Trivia Crack, but you'll still run into those in-app purchase-pushing walls.

The Extras + Suggestions

There is one way for a trivia fiend to continue answering questions, and it's hidden in the side (burger) menu in the appropriately named "Question Factory" section.

There, you can rate questions, suggest improvements (the "too specific" and "grammatical error" ratings are constant go-to labels) and simply answer as many trivia questions as you'd like, with no limit. It's this content creation part of Trivia Crack, plus it's social media-infused nature, that simultaneously holds so much promise and is frustratingly disregarded by Etermax.

For example, whenever you get a question in the game, a player's profile will flash on the screen, crediting them for that particular piece of content. This seems a little outlandish, but if those players were as easy to get in touch with as your opponents are through Trivia Crack's (basic but essential and awesome) social media chat and profile system, users might be able to create a culture around Trivia Crack that's more than just the game.