I love a quiz game and was drawn to Planet Quiz because it looked like it was trying out a geography and culture-focused quiz that reminded me of the Nat Geo quiz games from the PS3 era. I may have been a firm minority fan, but they held my attention whilst giving a clean, simple quiz experience. Plant Quiz: Learn & Discover is the closest I’ve got to those experiences so far. It even mimics its sterile gameplay.
Interestingly, Planet Quiz features a sizable single-player campaign that feels more rounded than its 2-4 local multiplayer quiz offering. The multiplayer aspect is all about being the fastest finger first to win points, and that’s about it. The single-player campaign is split up into 7 categories, encompassing the 5 mainland continents, the oceans, and the polar regions. Two DLC packs cover natural forests and… mystery?! It feels like they ran out of ideas and went off topic, and I’ve no idea why! The questions are split into 3 difficulties, with a random fourth option to merge them all together. The idea is to score a certain percentage of right answers to unlock the next difficulty.
The way questions are asked and solved is the strongest element of Planet Quiz. Aside from basic multiple-choice questions, it will often give you 3 or 4 countries, landmarks, foods, animals or historical people to sort. It might be that you need to click and drag them to locations on a rotating globe. It might be sorting them from smallest to largest, or from oldest to youngest. That way, Planet Quiz gets a lot of mileage from a smaller data set. It also means some questions aren’t immediately searchable online because you’ll need to dive into maps to know your geography. Whilst you may get some questions that repeat, they often have a little nuance to them. Each item used in the game has its own bio and players can learn about them in the in-game pedia. Having ideas about the facts for each country or animal will keep you in good stead for intense battles or reaching a certain correct percentage threshold.
Whilst spinning the globe and dragging and dropping answers is a nice way to interact, it slows the game’s pace down a little. That is only a tiny issue, as the game is quite generous with its auto-snap to location for the answer portrait blocks. That said, the pictures being used are often quite basic, and sometimes you are asked to name animals or people based on the artist’s impressions alone. This is a regular weakness in the question bank and a bit annoying. When playing a tailored quiz match, you can turn on and off certain question types and topic areas, so I recommend doing that for these types of questions if you are going to be seriously competitive. Otherwise, leave them in for a laugh.
There’s nothing wrong with Planet Quiz: Learn & Discover. It does what it says on the tin, but nothing more. Don’t expect graphical flair, interesting audio, or any different rounds of question types. Just expect 5,000 questions about sorting items and multiple-choice selections. This is exactly what I wanted when I grabbed the game on sale, which is really when I’d recommend it. It doesn’t have immediate flair to entice younger gamers, but I did actually learn things as I played!
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