Icon Pop Quiz: This iOS trivia game needs a lot of work to be great

Earlier this month, we brought you a sneak preview of Icon Pop Quiz, Alegrium's iOS trivia game that challenges players' pop culture knowledge across over 400 images. These images are subtle and streamlined, with images that might not immediately represent a movie's name or a television character, but can be deciphered over time based on what the images represent, rather than what they actually display.

A solo-player experience, Icon Pop Quiz is incredibly comparable to Logos Quiz Game, the game that tasks you with identifying company logos using hints and previous experience with the companies in the real world. Here, the game's images are separated by difficulty and into different categories like movie and TV show names or simply character identification. For instance, a picture of a solid red bathing suit might represent the television show Baywatch, while a pair of blue and red pills would represent the film the Matrix.

Tokens are awarded for each correct answer, and these Tokens can be spent on a variety of clues if you happen to be stuck on a particular picture. Clues may eliminate letters on the keyboard not used in the answer, or provide you with a text description for an item to go along with the picture. You can even purchase an answer outright or share your images with friends on Facebook and Twitter to ask for help without spending Tokens.

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Unfortunately, the addictive gameplay design can only take the game so far, as the technical aspects deserve a complete makeover. The game makes use of a proprietary keyboard that doesn't offer auto-correct and makes it incredible easy to mistype due to sensitive keys and an overall awkward feel. Furthermore, the game's forgiveness for spelling errors needs a lot of work, as some puzzles require absolute accuracy when it comes to spelling, and others can be spelled with letters missing entirely to still receive the Tokens. This is incredibly annoying when it comes to spelling character names like "Snuffleupagus," or other names that players might know how to pronounce but not to spell.

What's more, some clue answers are deceptive of entirely incorrect. Nitpicks among us will recognize Frankenstein's Monster for his blocky green head, but the answer is just "Frankenstein" and not "Frankenstein's Monster," which would have been more accurate. Additionally, characters that may be more known for their last names or aliases are required to be identified by their first names, which some fans might not know. Take, for instance, Eric Cartman from South Park. He is rarely referred to as "Eric" in the lore, and is instead known simply as "Cartman," but entering this in (or even the full name) results in a negative response. Furthermore, the game's color-scheme, which flashes yellow when you answer is "close," doesn't respond here, making things overly confusing or even unfair.

Putting it simply, the spelling and answer database in Icon Pop Quiz needs a complete overhaul to allow for multiple answers for each picture (where appropriate), and for more spelling forgiveness when it comes to entering names that might be spelled in a more unique way (like "Olive Oyl" from Popeye, as an example). Until these issues are fixed, the game is really difficult to recommend, due to the large amount of frustration available to players. Thankfully, a free version of the game is available (albeit with a lot of annoying "rate this app" pop-ups and a constantly flashing "upgrade now" banner), if you're interested in seeing the game's potential. A paid version is available without ads for $1.99.

Click here to download Icon Pop Quiz on iTunes now >

Have you tried Icon Pop Quiz? Have you had any problems with spelling errors in the game? Sound off in the comments!