🧑‍🎓 Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? XSX Review 6.5/10 "well...are you?" 🧑‍🎓 @MassiveMiniteam #IndieGames #GameDev

I think I’ve only ever played one truly awful quiz game – downloaded from the Nintendo eShop, natch – and so it almost feels like it’s impossible to make a bad game based on the quiz show format.

That said, it is very much possible to make games that don’t stand out from the crowd – and that’s kind of the high-wire on which Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader teeters.

Based on the US TV show of the same name, Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader follows the standard quiz game formula of making your way through stages of ever-increasing difficulty to finally answer that oh-so-tricky 6th-grade question. Playable in both single-player and offline-only multiplayer modes, the game pulls questions from various subjects such as reading, spelling, maths, literature, geography and several more, which unlock as you make your way through the game.

Unlockables make up the bulk of the replay value here, as rounds can be completed pretty quickly. In a sort of ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ vibe, you have three ‘cheats’ that you can call upon to assist you, and some aspects of the other kids that make up the class, as well as some visual aesthetics can be upgraded – but the swiftness of each game sets in pretty quickly, and there isn’t enough pizazz to hold the attention.

As fun as I found the questions themselves, the briefness of each play-through combined with the length of animations – which admittedly, can be sped up by holding down buttons – and how each answer selection needs to be held down for a second to select, gives the game an overall sense of sluggishness.

The music seems quite ‘stock’ but is primarily driven by bass, which gives it quite an enjoyable, inoffensive charm. The real highlight for me, though – was the ability to turn off questions specifically relying on knowledge of American culture, as this can really drag down US-centric games for those of us around the world, meaning that the question pool is accessible to all. Anyone who ever played Capcom’s Quiz & Dragons will know exactly how important this option is to have in the quiz game genre.