Publisher/Developer: Bit33/E5
Genre: Trivia Game
Price: $2.99
Verdict: A very mediocre Trivia game that doesn’t fulfill its potential
Pros: Fun for five minutes…
Cons:No real purpose to it, and an internet connection is required at all times.
Knowing loads of mindless pieces of information is one of those strange quirks that I quite like having. I’m terrible at remembering what I had for dinner last night but ask me every one of Mindy Kaling’s roles in The Office and I’m fine. So a trivia game on my iPhone sounded brilliant, when it comes to TriviaBurst? Well, you’ll see.
TriviaBurst is a very simple application and weighs in at a relatively tiny 1.1mb once installed. Upon first loading up the game, you must sign up for an account. This is primarily to aid things when submitting new questions and for the online leaderboard. There are three categories to choose from to answer questions on: Entertainment, General Knowledge and Sports. As well as these three, there are 11 sub-categories covering most sports, celebrities, movies, TV and music. The questions are heavily biased towards the North American market which makes sense but was a bit frustrating at times for my British mind. The questions cover three levels of difficulty with the ability to randomize the difficulty. Once the round is over, your score is submitted to the central server and you can check out the leaderboards to see how you are doing. This feature in particular thrives upon having friends who play the game too, especially as you can then create groups of people and challenge others to beat you. You can also connect your Facebook page to the app and automatically post your scores for all to see, if your friends actually care that is.
TriviaBurst’s simplicity is both a blessing and a curse. It’s good that it’s so simple to play, it entices you to play in five minute bursts at first. The problem is as time went on, I felt less of an urge to return to it. The questions are pretty varied and I only experienced a few repeated questions, but there didn’t feel like there was any achievement to playing. If more people played the game, it would be worthwhile but as it stands the leaderboard seemed to be full of a few die-hards that would take ages to catch up to. Ultimately I wanted some sort of reward to scoring well, not just a simple leaderboard. One pivotal problem that may affect some depending on your local area: all the questions are stored online and you have to log on to play, so if you’re in an area with no internet connection you can’t play. Not a problem for many I’m sure, but it can be awkward.
TriviaBurst has great potential with its ability to add your own questions but it needs a thriving community, and with a price tag of $2.99, I just can’t see why anyone would bother when there are much more enjoyable games to play, or trivia quiz books to buy. Oh and for those of you still wondering, Mindy Kaling plays Kelly Kapoor in The Office as well as being a story editor, writer, producer and most recently, co-executive producer on the show.
Wow, seems like the reviewer totally missed the point of this game. The addictive part of the game is the whole challenge part. I have several running challenges with my friends that keep me glued to this game as much as I can. And it is awesome to see my picture pop up on questions when my friends are playing….it really makes me feel like I'm part of the game.
I guess there is just no pleasing everyone! Ok, back to playing TriviaBurst…can't let my friends beat me!
Sounds like you have a built-in incentive to keep playing: friends that are playing along with you. What if you didn't have that incentive? Would it still be as interesting to you?
The incentive of a trivia game is to play the game, get educated and move on. TB has taken the game to the next level and allows others to compete with you, form groups and other fun and exciting things.
I for one love this game. I play for hours upon hours and hardly see any repeat questions, the graphics are crisp and clean. Yes it does require a internet connection, but I rather play online then be limited to a set of questions which repeat all the time. The game allows for others to submit questions right into the game, that is BRILLIANT and for you to compete with your friends. Like the previous poster, I have running challenges with our guys at work, and it's a constant back and forth.
I'm sure there's a way to have the game connect for question updates, but also be able to work in non-net-enabled areas, too, right? What about an iPod Touch on a bus, for example? Will this work there?
Hey I liked this game
hmmm, ok, let's see. I am a student and have spare time during my breaks and have been looking for a good trivia game on my iPhone 3G for some time now. looking through the trivia category in the iphone app store there is not one that I can say is good, that has an adverse set of trivia questions, and one that doesn't charge for additions. anyway, i ran into this game a little while ago from a different site which gave high ranks and I got the game. this game ROCKS!!!!! if you are into trivia this is it, I have invited others who I am not competing against. I am not sure but i disagree with this writer.
Cool. Sounds like you rather enjoy the questions being updated via online connections. That's a solid point worth considering when purchasing the game.
ok, yes, but look at the title "Verdict: A very mediocre Trivia game that doesn’t fulfill its potential" hmmm NO!! It a superb trivia game, loads of questions, competitive edge, ability to submit more questions. Yes good point about not being able to play offline, but now days you have Edge, GSM/GPRS, Wifi almost everywhere, even on planes now..so what's the issue??
The bottom line is most of the trivia games out there come with a defined set of questions, they are updated when Apple's blesses their magic stick on them and they app gets pushed over to the general public. These guys have massive amount of questions, plus user submitted questions which are added to give the edge.
Anyway, everyone has their point of view i guess, just wanted to give my 2 cents
Thank you for doing so! That's what makes this all worthwhile! :)
[youtube WCS80l4Mc_U http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCS80l4Mc_U youtube]
Sweet video, Davo. Is it from the developer? How'd they get the little mouse cursor to move across the screen? IS that some sort of emulator? I like it!
I think so, i found it on youtube! it's on an emulator i think
Hey guys, i have been playing TriviaBurst on my iphone for some time now and i love the game, i have been trying to get to the top of the leader boards and compete with others
Whether you like or dislike the game isn't at issue. What's at issue is the writer's main points: the game is skewed toward North American trivia, you need to bring your own group of friends to have friendly competition, there's a lack of non-leaderboard incentives, and an always-on internet connection may not be ideal for all players. If none of those things apply, buy the game! That's how *I* read this review. I think it's a solid review, with four solid points.
In these replies, all I'm seeing is "I LIKE IT!" Which is fine, and wonderful, and you should get all your friends to buy the game. I'm even going to bet that those folks reading this article will buy the game if those points don't bother them.
Pretty cool game
Wow I'm amazed to see so many comments on this game :) Must be my most divisive review to date which is interesting to see.
Roblef's pretty much summed up what I would say but then again I've already said it in the review: the game is definitely skewed towards North American trivia (a small point to some but a hugely critical thing for non-Americans) and it really does thrive upon having friends who play this.
I may be biased but 'TriviaBurst has great potential with its ability to add your own questions but it needs a thriving community,' sums it up perfectly for me. If you have friends who play: great. If more non-Americans such as myself submit questions then again: great.
As it stands though, if your friends aren't playing and you're non-American: this is a very tough one to sell especially at that price.
Hopefully I haven't repeated myself too much, but thanks all for the feedback :)
I'm confused, the article ends in saying that the app has "great potential" because it doesn't have the community yet to take it there (which is correct), while the Verdict calls it "very mediocre" and "no real purpose". Is that fair to drop kick the app like that with such inconsistency? I sure don't think so.
The author needs to get a grip over what matters here which is the playability, the trivia itself, question submissions, and the competitiveness. If you want British questions, then submit them. That's the point of the app and the community. I think a cool feature to add would be to add questions over the web and also have the ability to see how many people get your questions right or wrong.
Overall, I really like Triviaburst because i love trivia, I enjoy adding my own questions and seeing them during gameplay, and i enjoy competing. It's fun and it's worth $3.
See, here's my point right here. "The author needs to get a grip." Why, people, why!?!?! ;) No one needs to be making this about the reviewer. Opinons are going to DIFFER. That's the point of the internet, and something we strongly encourage here, obviously. But please disagree without telling reviewers that they're stupid, deluded, or have something wrong with them.
Everyone has their opinion, correct. And my opinion is that the reviewer is wavering with her tone hence the phrase "get a grip". That's it! It's my opinion, and moreover I have not called anyone "stupid, deluded, or something being wrong with them". So please sir, don't put words in my mouth.
"Why, people, why!?!?!?"
I'm afraid to comment on this statement you made because who knows how you'll take it. Sheesh!
Ugh. Using sarcasm isn't helpful. And neither is avoiding my request to play a bit nicer. Nor ramping up the non-nice behavior more in defense. It's not going to get me (or other folks like me) to buy the game, or even listen much to your opinion, it being laces with what I interpret as meanness. Just sayin.
Umm, yeah, being nicer while slinging mud in someone's face?
How convenient for you.
Mediocre often means average or ordinary. A game that doesn't fulfil its potential can still be called mediocre without being inconsistently described.
I'd stand by describing the gameplay as very ordinary, mediocre or average as it currently stands but with great potential if the community truly thrives.
I bought this app because it looked cool and it seemed different, and it is. It's like a web 2.0 app because it is interactive and community based. It's a unique concept and I really hope the community and game grows.
The key to the article is lack of community and questions with more of a global flavor…don't you think, as the writer, that you could start building your community in Europe and start adding questions that are more geared toward Europe so the rest of us could have a go at them as well? Just a thought…
Having added questions during reviewing the title, I can safely say I did so :)
However one person alone isn't going to be able to change much in a relatively short amount of time when a few thousand questions would need to be added to help the European market as you state. Maybe the devs could do with adding Europe as a category in future updates, of course then that could still lead to places outside of North America and Europe failing to feel part of things. Which is the fundamental flaw: it's all going to be down to who actually takes the time to build up said community which I suspect does run the risk of stagnating eventually as this could become a vicious circle.
Regardless of all that conjecture, I can only review the game based on the merits which I see during my time playing it unfortunately. Again this ties in with me stating it has great potential because this could well be improved upon in the future, only time will tell. :)
Certainly if the amount of people who have taken time to comment take that time to contribute to the TriviaBurst community, the game will thrive!
Hello,
We're the developers of the game and I am quite impressed with the feedback that I am seeing on this forum. The idea behind TriviaBurst is for it to be a competitive trivia game where folks can challenge friends, family, create groups and compete against other groups. The core of the game is still "trivia", we house a huge database worth of trivia and encourage users to add their own. At the end of the day it's a trivia game with the added twist on top.
The game does require an internet connection, it pulls and pushes information from our servers on a continuous basis. There is internet connection almost everywhere now, trains, airports, selected airlines etc, so our goal was to make a fully internet capable game vs. waiting for Apple to approve before a trivia database can be added with more questions. Some games charge for trivia categories, we don't, it's an all you can eat package in one game. Yes, the drawback is that you can't play in some areas where there is no internet connectivity but think of all the new questions you get to see and answer as the back end database gets updated with a fresh set of questions on a minute by minute basis. The questions are spread and wide, as the previous poster mentioned we encourage folks from every part of the world to add their own, so it's not US only centric.
We appreciate the review, as we can learn and grow from people's comments.
Regards
David Davtian