Trivial Pursuit, an adaptation of the classic board game for mobile phones, brings quite a few new options to an already prolific franchise, including different versions of the gameplay, an interesting and thorough statistics system, and the ability to upload scores to a worldwide leaderboard. While there are a few minor problems with the game, and while it is still ultimately just a copy of a very great original, there's no reason that a trivia fan looking to transplant the experience should not pick this game up.
Of the six different trivia modes, only two--classic and special edition--mimic the play style of the original game. For people who were not cognizant in the board-game era, Trivial Pursuit is a trivia game in which players travel around the board answering questions from different categories denoted by specific colors. When players land on certain spaces, called headquarters, they have the opportunity to win a pie-shaped piece of that color, and place it into their slotted game piece. A player must win one wedge from each category, and then return to the starter space and answer one question from a random category (in the home game, the category was often selected by the opponents). The modes that differ from this still offer trivia from the same six categories, but vary up the gameplay slightly. In wedge challenge, players must simply answer one question from each category and one random question as quickly as possible. In category challenge, players choose one category and answer as many questions from that category as they can. In high stakes gameplay, all categories are available and players can wager as much as they want on every question, up to 50,000 points, to try to rack up the highest score. Finally, there's a daily trivia question, which allows players to answer one question a day and keep a running score against other players. Although there's no support for multiple-phone multiplayer, some of the modes feature pass-and-play multiplayer for one to four players.
This version of Trivial Pursuit differs from the classic board game in one significant way--the questions are multiple choice instead of fill in the blank. Despite making the game much easier, multiple choice is better suited to this medium, and so this change helps to make the game better. There is an option that allows you to turn the answers to questions off. When exercised, this increases the longevity of the gameplay, as you won't automatically know the answer to a missed question when it comes around again, which, despite the plethora of available questions, happens from time to time. The questions are very current, which is a welcome relief from the questions about pertinent topics in the 1970s that can be found in the original version of the board game. With time, these questions too will become outdated, but the mobile format will be able to easily remedy that. The biggest problem with the game is that it must connect to the server and remain connected throughout the game. During our testing, the server would occasionally slow down a bit, and from time to time it wasn't possible to connect to the game at all. While this was infrequent, it detracted from the gameplay experience overall.
The game's graphics are meant to facilitate the gameplay, and they do that very well. While there's nothing flashy about the visual style, it captures the motif of the board game. When it comes to sound, Trivial Pursuit doesn't really do much. There are a few sounds when you're scrolling through options or rolling the die, but generally the sound effects are plain at best and totally absent at worst.
The unique strength of Trivial Pursuit is the way it tracks statistics. You can measure yourself against other players on the world scoreboard either by number of correctly answered questions or by percentage of correctly answered questions, and you can even narrow the selection of players to, for example, those who are the same age or who are in the same area code. You can also look more deeply at your own statistics to figure out which categories are your strongest. Even the daily trivia question indicates what percentage of people have gotten the question correct so far. The statistics, although not necessarily meaningful, really round out the game experience. While it's ultimately the same old Trivial Pursuit, there's a certain incentive to playing it with this much reward afterward. If you like trivia, and Trivial Pursuit in particular, this game will be a solid addition to your collection.
