The Wii U eShop is filled to the brim with low-budget kids' games these days, and Ninja Pig Studios' IQ Test seems like just another to heap on the pile... but looks can be deceiving. Beneath the simplistic exterior, IQ Test is a real mind-bender: a series of trick questions designed to get you to think outside the box. If you ever took one of those infamous quizzes in grade school that said "read all the instructions before answering any questions" and at the bottom of the page was "Don't answer any questions," you're in for a similar experience here.
Whether it's a clever twist on the brain-training concept or if it's just trolling players, IQ Test will surprise you. After the straightforward opening puzzle of "Tap the ducks from largest to smallest," the second riddle is "Tap here to continue" with a large green button below the text. If you press the button, you fail the test and get a goofy sad trombone sound — you're meant to take the instructions literally, and actually tap on the text that says "tap here" rather than tap on the button below. The rest of the puzzles play in this fashion — we won't give any more away — subverting your expectations of seemingly mundane puzzles for humorously frustrating results.
Unfortunately, there's not much meat on this test's bones. Gameplay takes place entirely on the GamePad with touch controls, which is permissible for a puzzler like this, but there's virtually no animation whatsoever; IQ Test is essentially a collection of static images with public domain-quality background music. Considering the lack of graphical detail, there are curiously long load times between some of the puzzles that break the flow of play and take you out of the experience, sometimes leaving you unsure of whether you've actually completed the riddle or not. There's also no save function, which means if you fail a puzzle you'll have to start the entire game over; at first this is fun in an old-school sort of way, but it gets irritating very quickly.
Considering you can find plenty of puzzles like these on your computer and smart devices for free, IQ Test retails for a shockingly high price point. There's so much potential for this "questioning the nature of games" concept to rise to some sort of higher meta level in the vein of The Stanley Parable, but IQ Test is content to play short-lived tricks on you and your friends.
Conclusion
It's respectable to see a clever title developed for the eShop on a tiny budget by such a small development team, but IQ Test's gags quickly wear thin with a high price point for a shallow experience. You could have fun trolling your friends, and there's potential for something much greater with this release, but Ninja Pig's debut eShop offering doesn't quite satiate the brain – we'll stick with Dr. Kawashima for now.
Comments 21
This is just The Moron Test. A game you can get on phones for about 69p. Why is this on a console, exactly?
It's like developers want the Wii U to fail!!
In all honesty, thats something you release on Newgrounds or Kongregate and nothing you use your expansive Devkit for...
I wonder if some of these devs feel shame for what theyve released, as they will probably be known as the devs that made the game where you tap rubber duckies like a dunce...
Who am i kidding, they wont even be recognized like that...
A lot of these developers are probably using the touch-screen features of the GamePad and treating the eShop like it's another Apple Store, and it's a shame not only for customers who could spend that $5 on an actual good game like The Legend of Zelda or Super Mario Bros. 3, but also for the developers who are probably capable of much more than that. In the end though it really is the Wii U that suffers because if it's not shovelware in disc-form like on the Wii (though it certainly exists on Wii U), it's shovelware in digital eShop form now. Between this, The Letter and others, the Wii U really doesn't need any of this.
It's nice to see new Indie devs on the eShop, but we the gamers are looking for quality, not quantity. On that note, thank goodness for quality titles like Shovel Knight, Cloudberry Kingdom and Mutant Mudds Deluxe.
This THING made it to the freaking WaraWara Plaza. Nintendo needs to delete trash games like these on the eShop in my opinion..
I really like this kind of thing but it needs a lower price or more content, I'd settle for future updates if promised but as it is.....I'll leave it for now.
@Imagamerboi I think that's it. The devs want Wii U to fail!
Quality control, please!
Isnt this the exact same one on ios? That first puzzle sounds very familar.
Even whether or not you purchase this game is an IQ Test. How meta.
Use this game to make fun of your friends. Laugh at the ones who bought this game.
I was actually considering getting this...guess I will on my iPad.
This game will probably be more notable for the invention/popularization of "miiverse marketing" - I have yet to see a developer get so connected and personal with his audience. That's the main reason people are buying, not so much the content of the game.
4 out of 10 is too high. 2 at best it seems to me.
Remember when Wii U eshop games didn't get lower than a 5/10? I miss those days.
Ugh, stick to the iPhone please.
@TheItalianBaptist
I actually think that's a pretty cool thing for developers to do, especially one man studios who developed games in the span of maybe 6 months. The Miiverse community is the only thing that keeps games like Internal Invasion, I've Got to Run at all tolerable (I even bought the latter solely for Miiverse reasons). If you weren't able to talk to TreeFallStudios on Miiverse The Letter wouldn't be nearly as "popular."
Quite a shame, I was actually pretty interested on that game. Oh well, 5 dollars saved.
Ouch, some of these comments are brutal. Definitely wasn't going to pick up the game without reading the reviews first, though. The title sounds like shovelware. Very personable developer, though, I must say.
Yeah, I talked to the developer via Twitter, and he really seems like a nice guy. He's not laughing maniacally at us, he's not trying to deceive people out of their money, and he's certainly not trying to "bring more shovelware to the Wii U." Quite simply, he found that the IQ Test concept seemed to work well for the Wii U, and wanted to use the Gamepad to its full advantage. Hardcore Nintendo gamers were never the demographic he was aiming for, and the sooner that's realized, the better off we'll all be. This is a party game, a casual game meant for folks who just want to have a good time. That's not to say we can't leverage criticism, of course, and I feel like the review given here by the staff was definitely a fair one. Everyone deserves a fair shake if they're capable of developing games for the Wii U, and clearly it had to be approved by Nintendo themselves before it could get on the digital shelf of the eShop.
The problem with these fames, especially one man studios, is that games have so many areas of importance. Programming knowledge does NOT give you good UI skills, design principles or marketing ability. That, the marketing, is the underlying fault: marketing entails the design amd creation of the product. "Itd be fun to have an IQ yest on the eShop" there was however no discussion of scope, scale, audience, substitutions or compliments.
Ultimately its really hard for anything to become a masterpiece without additional input and help and properly idemtifying all of the potential the market has to offer. Shovelknoght did this... that game doesnt really appeal to me but they sire as HELL knew who they were aiming for and created the game around those points. As a resultthey succeeded beyond recognition.
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