Questionaut: Glamorising Multi-Choice

Monday, March 17th, 2008

Questionut from the BBC

This game is pretty neat. When I saw it’s quirky mystical graphical style and it’s exploratory, intuitive interface, I immediately had very high hopes. Too bad those hopes were almost completely dashed when I was halted by none other than the infamous Multi-Choice Challenge! This is a fantastic example once again how far too many developers are interested in making things visually intriguing, and then running out of time to actually think about how to integrate the educational content into actual gameplay contexts. The actual learning component always seems to be retrofitted, like all the ugly rusting air-conditioning units that line the exterior of Shanghai apartment blocks.

However! I do like this more than Brain Age for a couple of reasons:
– There’s a world which you can escape into and visually it’s really neat, so it doesn’t feel nearly as much like work.
– They mix knowledge testing with skill testing and intertwine both with the visual surrounding.
– They also place many of these multi-choice questions in real life contexts.

It’s just such a shame as I just don’t see how they failed to connect together all these things into a cohesive experience.

P.S. There’s a big difference between learning games, and testing games. Where are all the learning games!?