Quizzical
by ToadleyUnderControl | get it here
A quick little treat here as I dig into some purchases I made during the current catalog sale. This is Quizzical, a game I would summarize as "memorizing Mad Libs". It's better than it sounds.
The game works like this: it presents you a "textbook" full of facts, charts, and graphs. You are given as much time as you'd like to study it, and then you take a multiple-choice test on the content. However, this content is randomly generated, so all of it is really just garbage. This is a feature, not a bug.
For example, you might be asked to memorize a chart which presents the weights of nouns. You'll see that scallions weigh 19, hotels weigh 7, and graffiti weighs 34. Of course this is all gibberish. You have to memorize it anyway, because the game is going to ask.
It's a really simple concept that sounds utterly stupid on paper, but as you get further into the game and the number of things you have to memorize at the same time begins to grow, finding ways to keep track of it all in your head is where a lot of the fun comes in. "Trucks evolve into warp pads"? Easy, everybody understands the Aperture Science logic that shower curtains are just low-tech portals. The store inventory is ice cream, scoops, and forklifts? Just as simple; clearly when you order ice cream, you order it by the scoop or by the forklift. "Straws counts on boats"? I, uh... well, you know, I'll let you think of something clever for that.
The list of possible words is smaller than you'd expect and you'll see repeats fairly quickly, but I don't really see that as a negative. Again, the combinations are more interesting than the words themselves, and I think that doubles as you become familiar with the words and grow to like them; seeing them pop up again and again in absurd ways is part of the charm.
Really, my biggest complaint is that the game doesn't save your progress in any capacity. By Chapter 14, the amount I was memorizing was becoming delightfully challenging; but after dropping out to check system settings, I found I was going to have to start back at the beginning, which is very simple and does take a little time to ramp up. So I didn't actually play very much; I'd like to go again sometime and see how difficult it gets, but it's going to be sometime when I don't have a bunch of other games I want to pop into.
- Gameplay: Medium
- Presentation: Medium-Low
- Crankitude: Nil
Verdict: I am spending my precious time on this planet memorizing intentionally meaningless nonsense... and I'm surprisingly okay with that???
Anyway maybe consider giving this one a try because I actually made the leaderboards despite having put very little effort into it... so it's clear Quizzical could use a little more love.
