The Great Beer Quiz

You’re never too far away from the sound of sirens on Britain’s streets. Awash with violence and alcohol, a glorious symphony of broken glass and bloody noses awaits every midnight hour. Okay, that may be overstating the matter, but there’s no doubt that Beer Britain is often in full swing.

As such, many browsing a mobile games section may be enticed by the title of The Great Beer Quiz, thinking, "Well I like beer, and I sure like a session on the pub quiz machine – it’s ‘great’ too, apparently – so how can I lose?"

These poor hypothetical punters will almost certainly be disappointed.

For a game about beer, the questions in The Great Beer Quiz are unrelentingly dry. Concerned with the minutiae of the brewing process, the heritage of certain beers and the origins of the Oktoberfest, The Great Beer Quiz is for those who love talking about or making beer rather than drinking it.

We try to consider our audience constantly here at Pocket Gamer. We can deal with bizarre niche products just fine, but I’m genuinely unsure as to whether the right niche exists for this title.

Perhaps there's a group of real ale-loving mobile gamers who will down it in one. Since lager and beer can be bought for less cash than soft drinks here, though, home brewing is more a novelty than a cost-effective solution these days, largely consigned to an older generation who do it as much out of nostalgia as anything else.

Without wanting to be ageist, mobile gamer figures drop off faster than action kicks off in Croydon of a Saturday evening once you get past the late 40s demographic, and these are the guys most likely to be concerned with worts, schimmel and the like.

The upshot of which is that this game is unlikely to have much appeal for you.

There are other problems beyond lack of appeal, including faulty translation, meaning that the willingly obscure questions will take you even longer to decipher. This becomes significant in gameplay terms as you’re always running against a clock.

In the Quick Mode, you’re given two minutes to answer ten questions, where the main mode works in levels of increasing question numbers and decreasing time limits. As the rounds continue, you need to get a higher proportion of the questions right in order to progress. There’s also a two- to four-player pass-the-handset option.

Faulty content aside, the visual elements of the game are fairly strong. Each question is accompanied by an image at the top of the screen. Since we’re talking about beer, making beer and beer culture, these never get all that interesting, but it does help lubricate the tough-to-swallow questions a little.

Nevertheless, we doubt the appeal of The Great Beer Quiz. Most of the people attracted by the title will be looking for something quite different to what the game offers. Add this difficulty to some dodgy translation and the glass starts to look somewhat less than half-full.