WikiArena is an oddly engrossing game. It’s a trivia roguelike that takes all the 6.5 million articles on Wikipedia and measures their length and their views in a 3 month period earlier this year. Your task is simple. When two articles are pitched against each other you have to choose which one is either most popular or longest.
It’s like a quiz version of top trumps and its very simple to pick up. Simply choose your option and a little animation will conclude with the winner. You have to get 10 correct guesses to complete a run and you are allowed 2 wrong answers. On the third, you are out. It sounds so simple but frankly, half the fun is seeing just how wrong you are. Articles that seem very niche have hardly any views and some very odd topics have the longest pages. I spent time trying to categorise if people have longer entries than places for example. It is odd to see just how much pop culture content is viewed more than science or factual based information… until you get sucked in and a rare species of ant spanks your guesses down.
Presentation wise, WikiArena is bare bones and functional, with some mood music gently tinkling away in the background. There is a daily run mode, a versus bot mode to catch out mistakes and a twitch integration mode to enable viewers to chime in on a vote. What appears to be missing is local multiplayer. If this was available, WikiArena would be an absolute requirement for all trivia and family games as its so simple and silly. Without it, it does feel a missed opportunity.
That minor niggle aside, having a trivia game where the odds of repeated questions are next to impossible is a boon. It has no frills, airs or graces but seeing how the internet finds various things interesting over others gives WikiArena an unusual charm. All for £1.69 too. Definitely one of my best budget purchases in 2022.
WikiArena is out now on Steam.
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