TriviaLinked review (Updated)

 

  UPDATE: It's not often that I will come back to review a game, but when I do, it is for good reason. See below for some updated thoughts prepended to the original review, along with an updated score.

Back when I originally reviewed TriviaLinked, it was during a time where the iron on daily challenge games like Wordle was still relatively hot. TriviaLinked caught my attention because of how focused it was in design and because I saw a lot of potential in its word-association-style puzzles, but ultimately I put it down because there were some pretty big problems that bogged it down.

You can read more about these issues in the original review below, and that's about the only place you can find out what they were now because the latest refresh of the app has addressed every single one of my previous issues with the game. Interrupted puzzles can be resumed, puzzles load reliably, and there is a lot more stat tracking and social sharing capabilities than their used to be. I had originally chalked these shortcomings up to perhaps setting expectations too high for a free game, but now TriviaLinked has all of that, looks a heck of a lot nicer, and is still completely free (side note: the app also does not ask to track or collect any data, either)!

Where does that put the 2025 version of TriviaLinked? In my book, that has it breathing rare air. It is increasingly difficult to find high-quality games on the App Store, much less ones that present a brand new challenge every day and ask literally nothing of you in return. Is it the deepest game out there? No, but that almost makes it better in my eyes. TriviaLinked is like a lightning-round of trivia you can blaze through in seconds once a day, and doing so is as satisfying and convenient as it's ever been.  

 

Original review from April 2023 below:

I've been playing Trivia Linked for the past week or two and enjoying its short daily quizzes. It almost feels akin to Wordle in how it is a short-form routine challenge, but I appreciate that it less of a guessing game. It's certainly not perfect and it lacks some very obvious features, but it is fun for what it is.

Make the connection

As you can probably guess from the name, Trivia Linked is a trivia game. It doesn't really have written questions, though. Instead, it serves up a prompt and then two possible choices. The right choice is a response that has some relation to the prompt. For example, a challenge last week had the prompt "Sic semper tyrannis" and listed "Virginia" and "Maine" underneath. Virginia is the right choice as sic semper tyrannis are written on the Virginia state seal and flag.

No matter which answer you pick, Trivia Linked then uses the correct answer from the previous screen as the prompt for the next question. Your goal every day is to get all 12 "links" between these prompts correct.

Just the facts

Part of what has kept my attention with Trivia Linked is its "question" design, or rather lack thereof. In addition to having a clever structure that has you basically word associate through terms and phrases, there's an added benefit having virtually no ambiguity when it comes to providing answers. This is a seemingly small thing, but it often is what ends up putting my off of other trivia games in most cases.

As for the variety of the questions themselves, I could stand to see different realms of trivia explored a bit more. In my time with the game, it seems like a lot of challenges have at least one link about identifying some historical figure's nationality. Still, I can deal with rigidity much more easily than I can either repetition or vagueness.

You get what you pay for

Most times, I complete my Trivia Linked challenge in one go since it doesn't have the wide-open possibilities of something like Wordle. That said, there was one day I got interrupted in my play only to revisit the game later on and see that my incomplete score got logged and everything I didn't complete got automatically marked as incorrect. I don't really care about maintaining my own stats or anything (which the app tracks right on the title screen), but it was annoying that I couldn't even give the other questions a go because I got interrupted.

There was also one time where I opened the app and it said that the game simply wasn't available to play, which was also less than ideal. Between these things and also the seemingly glaring omission of a fun way to share your results with friends, Trivia Linked definitely limits its own appeal. And, before anyone says anything, I know that the game has a way to share your results, it's just not visually appealing and feels more like an ad for the app as opposed to a reflection on your own performance.

The bottom line

Despite what might sound like some pretty significant issues, I am still quite satisfied with Trivia Linked's style of associative trivia. I suppose a big part of that is the fact that the game is completely free, but then again, I likely wouldn't mind throwing a little money at a game like this if it could tighten up some of its design.