Quiz Climber Review

Just one more go, I'll only be five more minutes, I'm not tired anyway. All things I said to myself last night while trying to extricate myself from the addictive clutches of Quiz Climber. Excluding the sublime Game Dev Story, I'm not convinced anything from the App Store has ever hooked me quite so much. Unlike Kairosoft's instant classic, Quiz Climber is incredibly simple. In doing so it provides the exact hook that's advanced games playing for decades: the element of competition.

Quiz Climber is a trivia game. General trivia at that, comprising of everything from choosing what color sea is a real sea to naming the famous boy wizard in J.K Rowling's books, Quiz Climber has it covered. Unlike some trivia games, nothing is too heavily focused on US trivia either with a healthy dose of sporting and entertainment questions covering enough knowledge that everyone stands a good chance of knowing the answer. This is quite understandable considering the home of Quiz Climber, British developer Relentless Software, most famous for the Buzz and Blue Toad Murder Files games. Years of practice with the trivia genre are clear here too. There are no gimmicks, just competitive fun.

You see, Quiz Climber hooks up to Facebook using the player's friends lists to provide them with a personalized way of competing. There's no faceless leaderboard here as the player will always know the person they're beating or trying to catch up to. Players take the role of squirrels and must climb a tree by answering questions in order to leapfrog past the competition. It's endearing, it's simple, it's ridiculously addictive, it's my new favorite game.

Leaderboards are reset each week ensuring there's a new target to aim for at regular junctures. New questions are also promised every two weeks to keep everything fresh. Lifelines can also be acquired through simply trying to progress. These then give players a much needed second chance.

There's a free ad-supported version of Quiz Climber available but this one really deserves the asking price of $1.99 and the removal of ads is always welcome anyhow. Obviously for those who don't use Facebook this game is going to have very limited appeal so it would have been a bonus to offer Twitter or GameCenter support. It'd certainly save me adding Twitter friends on Facebook solely to chase their high scores. As it stands though, Facebook is huge for a reason so this should only limit a small minority of people. Simply put, Quiz Climber is an unmissable combination of social gaming and addictive competition.