Smarty Pants: Trivia for Everyone Buy Now

I tried this game for the first time last night with my sister and her teenage daughters. On the whole, the game got pretty positive reviews. The teens are insisting I bring it again to the next family get-together. That said, I thought there were some missed opportunities in terms of design, and the software seems to be a bit "buggy".

Pros:
The activity that surrounds the actual trivia questions helps keep the game from being too dry or intellectual. The nieces liked dancing to make the point values improve, and the process of assigning question point values for each round with all the players shooting arcade-style at positive or negative values yielded unexpected "bonus rounds" in which the points for a correct answer (and corresponding penalty for for a wrong one) went from the baseline 50 to over 1000. This brought more strategy into play, as everyone is trying to catch up or protect their lead. The topic selection proved to be very engaging as well as the topic wheel can be nudged toward personally-favored topics or player choice, leading to some seriously competitive nudging as the wheel slowed down. In the team game countdown game, players who are not being asked a question can do various motions to slow down the clock, which keeps them from just sitting around taking turns being engaged in the game.

Con:
While the questions are reportedly adjusted based on age, this only comes into play significantly during the "family" game, as this mode is better about asking specific players questions in turn. There is a place where it may come into play during the final stage of the competitive ("friends") modes, but on the whole, in this mode, each question is a jump ball for all the players. Consequently, the advantage gained by the nudging of the topic wheel is more subtle than if the subsequent question was directed toward a particular individual. One apparent point of design that I was able to cash in on several times is that if a player guesses incorrectly, the point value is reset for subsequent guesses. I was able to pick up big points by simply picking the last remaining option. This brings me to the biggest drawback of the game. The questions are presented in a multiple choice format; however while in "friends" mode, we encountered several questions in which the question was presented, but not the answer options. These would pop up briefly as the game announced, "No one buzzed in!" This was increasingly frustrating unless you were dead sure you knew the answer; you could then "buzz in" and the options would appear, allowing you to select the answer.Get more detail about Smarty Pants: Trivia for Everyone.