Trivia Royale
Free with IAP
A couple of years ago an innovative Trivia game, HQ, roared through mobile with its live Trivia feature that emulated a pub-style experience of live Trivia with a time limit. The bonus was that the ultimate winner (out of hundreds of thousands) would win a cash prize. Over time, however, the production heavy team were not able to sustain this enterprise and the app eventually closed.
In its wake however, several less ambitious Trivia games have spawned in its wake, including the newest – Trivia Royale – which has you competing against 1024 other players in a knockout tournament to be the king or queen (complete with crown) of Trivia. From the beginning the app screams polish, with great sounds, animations, quick matchmaking and a quirky little feature on Apple devices called “Game Face” which uses your phone’s Face ID cameras to map your facial expressions to opponents.
It certainly draws a lot from HQ, with catch phrases and jokes flashing up in between rounds, as well as a decent mix between a wide range of topics, from geography to gaming, film and tv, celebrities and general knowledge. If you are keen to dial in on a specific topic, you can challenge players across a full range based on the questions placed into the “Royale” mode – although you won’t be able to compete for the illustrious crown. Winning a Royale bestows your avatar with a shiny gold piece as well as access to the “Royale Lounge” to chat and compete with other winners.
Trivia Royale is one of those mobile games that appeals to a wide audience, and if the odd advertisement bothers you it’s a $5 charge to remove them forever.
Mineblast is a quirky little pixel art platformer that has you controlling a variety of different characters on an adventure through a variety of increasingly difficult tunnels. Featuring great music, lots of clever physics-based puzzles involving dynamite, bridges, platforms and timed jumps, there are plenty of hidden secrets and levels littered throughout each stage.
Controls are fairly traditional on screen buttons for left/right, up/down, although the game is fairly clever at giving you a little bit of grace – sadly there is currently no controller support which would be perfect for getting those jumps and bomb throws just right. Enemies react to the environment in the same way as the character, so falling structures or explosions sort them out just as you might succumb to your own mistakes.
Each level is quite short and there really are not any issues regarding IAP – very few ads or payment triggers. During my review there was some slight lag during movement but as of writing this has been patched out and more hidden characters (including cats!) have been finally included.