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Google releases fun ‘Game of the Year’ that quizzes you on 2018’s top trends

Last week, Google posted its annual Year in Search video to highlights 2018’s top search terms. To accompany that list of popular queries, Google today released the “Game of the Year” to test your knowledge of this year’s trends.

This “Game of the Year” quizzes you about popular search trends in 2018, with the questions increasing in difficultly as the rounds progress. At the start of the game, users can enter their name and customize the sound of the virtual host.

You can adjust the speed (slow to fast) and pitch (low to high), with the natural-sounding synthesized voice created by DeepMind’s WaveNet. These algorithms were just used to make an Australian and British accent for Google Assistant, and is also available to third-party developers in Google Cloud.

How well do you know what trended in Search this year? Let’s find out.

Fortunately, the voice can be entirely muted in the upper-right corner, with all instructions noted on screen. You have 10 seconds to answer each question, with three wrong answers permitted before the game ends. In between each round, Google provides a useful factoid or a corny joke.

Points are awarded by how soon you answer, with questions getting progressively harder and adding more possible answers. There are 20 in total, with Bonus Rounds in between that reveal a left/right swipe-inspired game to earn more points.

Users can share how well they did with buttons for Twitter and Facebook, with the app working best on a touchscreen device given the interaction method and large touch targets. This Game of the Year is quite whimsical, as well as elegantly branded and animated to feel very Googley.


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Avatar for Abner Li Abner Li

Editor-in-chief. Interested in the minutiae of Google and Alphabet. Tips/talk: abner@9to5g.com