Netflix’s efforts into the interactive and gaming space so far have been slow and steady but Trivia Quest gave Netflix the opportunity to cash in on the growing trend of daily games like Worlde, Heardle, and others that have taken the internet by storm. Sadly, what’s been released doesn’t quite hit the mark.
In case you’ve missed it, Trivia Quest is a brand new interactive special presented in the form of a daily quiz that’s dropping new episodes every day throughout April. We called it Netflix’s answer to Wordle and other sites also had that take. The show itself is based on
What’s been delivered so far is a bloated daily quiz that is held back by Netflix’s technology rather than enabled by it.
First up is the discoverability of the show. As The Guardian notes, on day 1 you had to go “deep in the bowels of its sub-menus”. On the mobile app, the show doesn’t feature in the game tab (nor do any of the other interactive specials) so that means unless the algorithm decides you’re a match, you’ll have no chance of catching this organically.
Given it’s releasing daily, you’d have thought they’d make an effort to put the show somewhere prominent throughout the month of April at least.
The story has you answering questions to earn coins and if you earn enough, you get to unlock one of the characters locked up in a cage. Every day has a different theme of questions (day 1 was about movies, day 2 was about music, and day 5 was about Netflix shows and movies) with both a normal and hard mode to complete.
Given the aim of the quiz is for you to unlock the characters, if you don’t answer the questions correctly you’re able to go all the way back to the beginning to complete the quiz again. It’s a nice feature but the whole point of a quiz is to test your knowledge rather than your ability to remember answers but that’s nitpicking.
As stated above, the overall package feels bloated compared to what it should’ve been. Every day, you’ll have to watch the same intro and listen to the same quips for each question which becomes tiresome. Netflix states that each episode will run you around 9 minutes although the reality is it can sometimes be longer.
With Wordle and other such games, the main reason they’ve grown in popularity is down to the bragging rights that come with it. This is enabled by a simple share button that allows you to copy and paste your scores into social media or messaging apps. There’s no such thing in Trivia Quest. The only way to do it is either remembering your score or a well-timed screenshot.
Trivia Quest – Picture: Netflix
Given Netflix has a profile system, you’d thought there’d at least be a way to compare how you did vs other members in your household but alas, there is not.
This criticism also extends to Netflix’s suite of mobile games, it’s worth noting, which also operate in their own solos so to speak. In some cases there are leaderboards but the chances are you don’t even know what your username is on said leaderboards.
Who the show is aimed at in its current form is somewhat confusing too. The graphics package and voice lines are clearly aimed toward younger audiences but the questions are pretty hard. In the first day’s questioning, you’re asking young audiences to know about films released decades before their time.
Tracking your progress from day to day isn’t easy either. You get a brief glimpse of your overall coins scored at the end of each quiz (whether completing normal or hard) but there’s nowhere outside of the interactive special how well you’ve done. When you do get to see your progress you can be too slow and then hurried along to the hard mode or the credits sequence.
In conclusion, the interactive special seems to be hamstrung by the technology its operating in at present. It’s too bloated to be enjoyable on a daily basis and too short to be enjoyable for a family get-together. Perhaps in the future, if you’re playing in a living room, each member of your household can log in and complete the quiz together with their respective Netflix profile icons showing alongside the answers they picked therefore making it a competition.
With all that said (and this review has been exceedingly negative), we’re excited by the first steps here and think with further tweaking, the format can be perfected. We’ve advocated for Netflix Gaming to have the same kind of impact on the gaming world as the Nintendo Wii did and while there’s a long way to go, we think Netflix can get there.
Did you enjoy Trivia Quest on Netflix? Let us know in the comments down below.
