Back in the early 90s, Capcom made an arcade game that was like a mix of a fantasy RPG and a trivia game called Quiz & Dragons. I never saw it in an arcade, but I did play it on one of their collections and thought it was a neat idea.  So I was happy to see something similar in Dungenious, a downloadable game for iOS and Android devices (reviewed on iPad here), that’s a mix of a quiz game and an RPG dungeon crawler.  The story goes that owls are the keepers of knowledge, but one greedy owl wanted all the knowledge for himself.  So he stole all the words and pictures from books and hid them in monster-filled dungeons.  Now it’s up to you to be the hero and venture forth into the dungeons to seek out knowledge.

You start out by choosing a male or female hero and then picking your trivia topic. There are tons to choose from, including arts and entertainment, math, geography, music, literature, and much more.  Then you venture into top-down viewed dungeons, and swipe the touch screen in four directions to move around.  You must move to the top of the screen to exit to the next floor.  Monsters will appear and when you face them and swipe in their direction, you’ll attack.  You fight by answering trivia questions, and if you get them correct, it counts as a hit.  Answer quickly for stronger hits.  Find treasure chests to get goodies to help you on your way.  Sometimes you may even have to answer trivia questions to get the treasure.  Items you can get include magic spells to help clear out enemies, healing items, slots to hold more hearts for health or magic, and more!

Now, the way you answer the questions in this game is a little different. When you come across a monster with a scroll beside it, that counts as an answer and they’ll just give it right to you.  So answering questions in the first few floors is pretty easy.  But once you get deeper and have to remember a bunch of answers, it can get pretty tricky.  Plus, later monsters will make the multiple choice questions disappear or move around, so you must remember the correct answer among the mess.  It’s Game Over when you run out of hearts, but I don’t think there is an end to the dungeon so the goal is just to get as far as you can.  The game has a bit of an amateurish feel to it, and I prefer quiz games that have more of a multiplayer, competitive edge.  But if you like trivia games, you may want to give this one a try anyway.

Kid Factor:

When you hit enemies with attacks and magic spells, they just fade out and disappear when defeated, so violence is very minimal. Reading skill is a must, but the game could be considered educational as many of the topics are things children learn in school.  In fact, if your child is studying about memorizing the US States in school or the notes on a staff in band class or piano practice, there are topics in the game that can help.  In fact, the game supports a program called Quizlet where you can make your own practice flash cards for use in the game!  So Dungenious could be a fun study tool for kids, too!

Tags: Game Reviews