Our rating: By: Daniele Antonietti Version #: 1.0 Date Released: 2011-07-06 Developer: Price: 0.00 User Rating: Loading... Loading... Download App

Photo Quiz Challenge is a remarkably basic game in which you are presented with a photo for a limited amount of time, and then have to answer a question related to that photo. You have 3 lives, and as you successfully answer questions, the time limit for viewing the photos decreases.

Sure, it may not sound remarkable, but the positive feeling of brain-training you get from it means that it’s the kind of game that you’ll be dipping into at regular intervals, just because it feels a good massage of the mind.

The 1000-odd photos in the database are all run-of-the-mill images, which they should be considering you’re meant to be scrutinising the photo rather than admiring it. At first, you may find yourself baffled at the questions it asks and think, ‘How the hell am I meant to know how many people wore bracelets in the photo? I was looking at how many of them were wearing **cking earrings!’ Before long though, you’ll see improvement, as you learn to scrutinise the photos with the efficiency of a detective on speed. And this is a satisfying feeling.

The game is accompanied by goofy sound-effects, and a basic tribal beat which is presumably meant to focus your mind by sending you into some kind of trance. Not sure if this works, and hopefully an upcoming update will give you the option to listen to your iPod while playing the game.

Photo Quiz Challenge is compatible with Game Center, meaning that your scores automatically get submitted to the Global leaderboards (I’ll take this chance to brag that I’m currently ranked 6th in the world). You can also play online against friends and strangers, doubling the intensity of what is already a brain-straining game.

At the outset, this appears to be a fairly linear game, but its brain-training effect is surprisingly addictive; not in that Tiny Tower wasting-your-life-away kind of way, but in a way that actually feels like your mind is having a work-out. The option to submit your own photos to be included in the next update suggests that this game is going to develop and improve as time goes by; also, having your face in an iPhone game could be quite satisfying in a cheap, pathetic kind of way.