Brain Show PC Review 2/10 "Brain Show may eventually get better..." 🧠 #IndieGames #GameDev

Sony’sBuzz! trivia game series was a massive PlayStation hit in the 2000s. Its straight forwardness was key to its success, with the game faithfully replicating a TV quiz with the aid of the Buzz! Buzzer controller that lets you chime in to answer just as on a real-life game show.

Sadly the format didn’t last, presumably, because the internet is swimming with free trivia quizzes. These daysBuzz! games and peripherals are most commonly found clogging up the shelves of charity shops across the nation: casual players don’t need this plastic tat in their house and retro games fans are a little snooty about this powerfully mainstream mini-franchise.

It’s now been thirteen years since the last Buzz! game and the (aptly named) developer Simplicity Games thinks it’s time for a comeback. Enter Brain Show, which waits until the dead of night, grabs a shovel, heads to the graveyard, and tries to bring Buzz! back from the dead.

But… sometimes a corpse should be left well alone. Brain Show is superficially similar to Buzz! though in its current form is a sad, shambling wreck that is essentially in early access while being sold as a complete game.

So, how do you screw up a basic quiz show game?

Let’s start with the positives: Brain Show does indeed have lots of questions packed into it. Also, the graphics are inoffensive in a ‘get the job done’ sort of way.

Now onto the rest. Let’s begin with one of the few multiplayer sessions I struggled through with my girlfriend. The first hurdle came during character creation. Due to the game having a live announcer you have to choose from a selection of names rather than input your own. “David” was there, but hers was not. Okay fine, it’s not exactly a common name.

Then we pick our avatars for the game. Every single character on offer is white. She is not. It’s at this point that Brain Show began to feel a little… shall we say, culturally myopic. Even Micro

Machines on the NES had a more diverse cast of characters than this! None of this makes for a great first impression.

Then the quizzing begins and… well, let’s go with “competent”. There are a few types of rounds that get cycled through. One time you may be tossing a burning stick of dynamite between players as you answer questions correctly, or having to choose the correct Yes/No

answer to avoid plunging through a hole.

The points you accrue here are then used to decide your ‘health’ in the final round, where correctly answering questions lets you damage your opponents and eventually eliminate them. It’s fine but poorly balanced, with the bomb-tossing round giving thousands of points where others give just hundreds, Not that it matters too much anyway, as a commanding lead throughout the game can fall apart in a few questions in the final round.

While the presenter is voice-acted, the questions appear to be read by a text-to-speech program. This is understandable given that there are 5000 of them, but it also throws up weird mispronunciations, like “dynamite” coming out as “die-nahm-eetay”. The game is also riddled with typos and odd phrasing, which may be a symptom of it being translated from Polish. I mean, even the name ‘Brain Show’ sounds kinda weird.

It’s also instructive to look at what Brain Show doesn’t have. Notably the game is limited to local multiplayer with no online functions. The store page halfheartedly promises the “possibility” of online play via Steam’s Remote Play, but this is going to be a bodge job and anyone tuning in remotely will be at a disadvantage in quickfire rounds due to lag. I found myself wishing there was functionality similar to Jackbox Games’ multiplayer titles, where each player can use their phone as a controller and the game itself can be streamed over video conferencing.

There is also no single-player content whatsoever, not even letting you practice questions alone. You can fake a multiplayer match and play against yourself, though once again this is clumsily crowbarring functions into the game that should have been included as standard.

The game’s road map promises that single-player and online multiplayer are on the way, though putting something on a road map and actually delivering it are two very different things.

SUMMARY

At its most basic level, Brain Show provides a multiplayer quiz video game. But while it clears that bar in its current state it’s clearly incomplete.

If this were being sold as an early-access game I’d be more charitable, but it ain’t.

Brain Show may eventually get better but right now? *BZZZZ*