Back in the 80’s when I was a kid, my parents and many other adults hosted Trivial Pursuit parties. The board game was super popular back then for some reason. While the trivia questions were fun (we often took just the box of trivia cards on road trips), I never liked the board game rules because it could take forever to get all the pie slices to win the game. Now you can play a similar trivia board game called Mind Pursuit on iOS/Android devices (iPad version reviewed here), and luckily the rules are better laid out so games don’t last forever!

Here’s how Mind Pursuit works. Up to six human players can participate, or you can just compete against the CPU if by yourself. Although the three skill level descriptions for the CPU aren’t very helpful, as they are “Smart, Educated, and Wise.” When it’s your turn, you roll the die and answer a question based on the color square you landed on. Each color represents a category, like Entertainment, Sports, Science, History, etc. If you answer the multiple choice question right, you get to move again. You’ll want to move as much as possible to make it around the circle.

Some of the squares have stars on them. If you answer a question correctly on those squares, you’ll earn a little colored lug nut piece for your marker. If you land on the same square as your opponent and answer the question right, you can steal one of their lug nut pieces if they have one that you lack. The last way to get pieces is to make it around the board. Then you can pick one based on a category without even having to answer a question right. Whoever gets all six pieces based on each of the categories wins. In this fashion, the game ends much quicker than in Trivial Pursuit, and I like it better for that.

After playing, you’ll earn coins that you can use to buy extra question packs, themes, and other goodies. You can also buy coins with real money, but luckily earning coins by playing won’t take too long either. If you love trivia board games, you’ll definitely want to check out Mind Pursuit.

Kid Factor:

Reading skill is a must for the questions, and some of the trivia might be tough for younger players to know. Although they do have some that kids would recognize. I came across one question that asked which power Pikachu has, for instance. It’s too bad there’s not a Junior pack of questions for children. At any rate, the game is pretty fun for older kids and certainly could be considered educational, too.

Tags: Game Reviews