King Solomon's Trivia Challenge (PC)

Details: Category: Computer; By Cheryl Gress; 27.Sep; Hits: 10576

Game Info:

King Solomon’s Trivia Challenge
Developed By: Cloud 9 Games
Published By: Left Behind Games
Release Date: January 7th, 2011
Genre: Trivia
Single, Multiplayer on the same computer
ESRB: not rated
Retail Price: $19.95

System Requirements
•Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7
•1.0 GHz CPU
•256 MB RAM
•250 MB hard disk space
•8x CD/DVD-ROM drive, or faster
•16 MB DirectX 9.0c compatible video card
•DirectX compatible sound card
•Speakers
•Microsoft compatible keyboard and mouse

Thank you Left Behind Games for giving us this game to review!

Since Left Behind Games acquired Cloud 9 Games, they have revamped and re-released their titles as LBG products. King Solomon’s Trivia Challenge is a repackaged Solomon Says Anything Goes. The announcer is new and the game’s background graphics are improved a bit, but as far as I know, the questions remain the same.

Here are the categories: (Anything Goes covers everything)

Anything Goes
Food and Wine
Signs and Wonders
Old Testament
New Testament

This game is pretty fun, and with the wise cracking announcer, it’s similar to the "You Don’t Know Jack" series. However, it has a completely different point system. In single player, after the question is asked, your total available points quickly decreases until you answer the question, so think fast! If you get a question wrong, the amount you would have won is subtracted from your score. There’s a random question multiplier that appears for a few seconds, and if you press your action key in time, you can double or triple the question's value. This is essential if you want your name to be recorded in the hall of fame! The multiplayer operates in a similar fashion, but everyone shares the keyboard and must press their key first to get a chance to answer the question.

Highlights:

Strengths: Fun and exciting game play, great knowledge tester

Weaknesses: Sharing a keyboard is a bummer

Moral Warnings: Some of the announcer's comments are edgy

There are eight unlockable characters available to you as you play the game. They make comments as you answer questions, and you can use unique taunts to distract other players in multiplayer mode. To keep things fair, most of the unlockables require all of the players in a multiplayer game to have a certain number of points to enable it.

The little girl and boy voices are cute, but they are hard to understand at times. The announcer is better in this version, but some of the comments are pushing it a bit in my opinion. For example, if you get a question wrong he may say "I don’t know where you pulled that answer from but I bet it wasn’t sanitary." There is also a snake question with reference to the movie Snakes on a Plane (no he didn’t use THAT line). I think this game is safe and fun for people of all ages, but I just noticed they pushed the envelope a little further this time around.

New features include new voiceovers and the graphics got overhauled a little bit. While the interface is the same, the questions now have animated backgrounds behind them, and they look good without pushing up the minimum system requirements by much.

Score Breakdown:
Higher is better
(10/10 is perfect)

Game Score - 80%
Gameplay - 16/20
Graphics - 7/10
Sound - 7/10
Stability - 5/5
Controls 5/5 Morality Score - 97%
Violence - 10/10
Language - 10/10
Sexual Content - 10/10
Occult/Supernatural - --/10
Cultural/Moral/Ethical - 8.5/10

The only glitch I ran into was installing this game. I had to bypass the auto-running setup.exe and install the game via the install.exe instead. Other than that, it ran great.

If you’re a fan of the "You Don’t Know Jack" series and are looking for a fun way to test your Bible knowledge, look no further than King Solomon’s Trivia Challenge. It’s priced at a reasonable $19.95, but I have seen it as low as $4.99.