Review: Papa's Quiz – PS5, PS4

Quiz games are always a solid bet, but what about a quiz game that releases during a pandemic that severely limits who you can play with? Papa’s Quiz has it tough but it rides the wave well enough.

Papa’s Quiz is a weird little game. There’s nothing out of the ordinary about it – it’s a quiz game where up to eight players can answer questions from various topics using a smartphone or tablet. You go to the game’s website, enter the code, and you connect to the game, a little like the other party game that released recently, What The Dub?!.

Questions are thrown on the screen and the quickest correct answer gets the most points, the second gets the fewer points, and so on. The game comes to a conclusion with the fifth round being the big event finale where those who are behind can pull it back by being the quickest and avoiding the pit of loserdom that all players are headed towards in the final round.
It’s really simple stuff and as far as quiz games go, it does the bare minimum and then a little more. Choosing which category you’ll play between rounds is done by jostling with other players to move the single on-screen cursor over the desired category. I actually liked this, even though I only played against my partner. I’d ask her which category she wanted to do, and then fight to make sure we didn’t select that category. I like being annoying and the game gave me a legitimate outlet for my annoying tendencies, so credit where it’s due.

The weird comes from the in-game announcers. One is a robot with a robot-sounding text-to-speech voice, while the other is a weird man with what sounds like an Indian accent who runs the show. It’s a weird pairing but the two characters give a bit of life to the game. And speaking of life, you can inject a bit of life by dancing when you win a round. The game has various dances that you can make your avatar do if you win a round. Again, silly, stupid, but ultimately harmless, and there is the option to skip the dancing if you want to show a bit of decorum.
And that’s all there is to it. It’s an average quiz game dressed up as a weird quiz game. It works though and if you can get a few people together, I can see it being a fun party game for a while. Does it have staying power? Not really, and there are better party games out there, and unfortunately for Papa’s Quiz, it’s releasing in the middle of a pandemic which means a lot of people won’t be able to get the best out of it.