I got a new trivia game to test. Bezzerwizzer is a Danish game from few years ago and now coming to Finland. It’s a fairly basic trivia game with some nice twists, traditional but kind of modern at the same time. The game boasts 5000 questions in 20 different categories and the goal is know the answers.

Each round begins with a draw: you get four random topics to answer. There’s a luck element, but it is somewhat mitigated by the scoring of the questions. First is one point, second two, third three and fourth four points. The player or team gets to choose the order and the value of the questions, so you can make your best category the most valuable.

Twisted by special tiles

There are couple of twists to the otherwise straightforward process. First is Zwap tiles: each player has one. It can be used on your turn to swap the locations of two topic tiles. Switch the order of your topics, switch topics between players or mess someone else’s topic order! This can be nasty or useful, but you can only do it once per round (once the topics are covered, new tiles are drawn and a new round starts).

The two Bezzerwizzer tiles are the bigger thing. These allow you to answer someone else’s question. Just claim your turn by playing the tile (be fast, only first player to claim gets to bezzerwizzer). The Bezzerwizzer answers after the player in turn and if the actual player is incorrect and the Bezzerwizzer is correct, the Bezzerwizzer scores one point or three points, depending on whether they made the claim before hearing the question or after. If the actual player is correct, Bezzerwizzer loses the tile, but suffers no penalty. If the Bezzerwizzer answers incorrectly, there’s a penalty of one point.

Swift and entertaining, if a bit easy

The game is pretty fast, it shouldn’t take more than three rounds unless the players are really bad at trivia (why are they playing the game, then, is a good question). The questions range from very easy to somewhat specific, but harder questions tend to be multiple choice questions. Overall I’d say – based on exactly two games – that the questions seem a bit too much on the easy side. There’s a fair bit of luck with the questions, but that’s what you expect from a trivia game and the Zwap tiles can help a bit there.

The Bezzerwizzer tiles are what make the game, without them this would be another boring trivia game. You’ll have to think about who knows what and act fast, if you want to claim the right to answer. This means you’ll have to focus on the game on other people’s turns. That’s good, and combined to the generally fast pace of the game, makes Bezzerwizzer an interesting game that stands out a bit compared to the old, familiar trivia game fare.

The components are nice. The box is very plain, as are the boards, but the tiles are nice, chunky bits of plastic. I’m a fan of chunky bits of plastic, that always works…