Skill Review: Categories Game

PROS

CONS

VOGO Voice RATING                                4/5

Voice First                                                                  4/5
Display Friendly                                                        5/5
Performance/Ease of Use                                       4/5
Accuracy/Data Quality                                             3/5
Value Proposition                                                     4/5
Categories game

Verdict

Developed by Verto Labs, the ‘Categories Game’ on Alexa is a quick-paced and highly engaging word game. Following a guided gameplay, Alexa rolls a random letter and asks the player to come up with words beginning with it, in six different categories. What truly ups the ante and the thrill, is the scoring system. If you answer correctly, your score is decided by deducting the number of seconds before you say the answer, from 50. If you cannot answer for a letter in a category, the score in that category for that round is zero. The complexity of the scoring system alongside the rarity of words for certain letters in a specific category makes this game truly challenging. The top 10 players for every letter are featured on the website’s leaderboard, the ranks descending from the toughest letter to the easiest. Scores are mentioned after each round alongside the scores you need to be on the leaderboard. 

The player gets up to one minute and additional six seconds of extra time (on demand) to come up with a word. You can say “skip” to jump off to the next category and “repeat” to hear it one more time. You can also say “change the letter” if you are faced with a challenging letter with rare words. That said, the inability of the skill in recognizing specific words said by the user comes as a major limitation. The makers claim that the ongoing updates to the skill’s lexicon will resolve the issue.

The game allows you to unlock more categories as you progress further. Extra categories can be unlocked with a premium subscription priced at $7.99. Premium users can enjoy up to 36 categories and an added hint feature. The additional categories include Musicians, Sports Activities, Music Bands, Books, Astronomy, Video Games, Mountains, Desserts, Colleges, and Music Festivals. The roster seems pretty impressive to hook word game enthusiasts on party nights with friends or family. 

The VOGO Voice team scores this skill 4 out of 5 stars based on our rating system. A true-to-style word game, the originality of the skill is rooted in its concept. For students of liberal arts and academics, this game can serve as an effective means to test and develop the purview of their information and language skills. We recommend you try it yourself and witness the excitement that ensues through a quick-fire mental workout.

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