Mandatory social distancing has been going on for more than a month now, and the natives are getting restless. Protests are popping up throughout the country, seemingly less out of ideological fervor than out of the inevitable ennui that comes from being cooped up with the same people every day.
The technological advances of the 21st century ensure that you’ll never run out of things to do at home. But watching Netflix over and over again can become monotonous, even if you are discovering content you never knew existed. Furthermore, spending your days glued to a screen can’t exactly be good for you.
I recommend taking a break from TV to play a family game. I’ve come across several new games this quarantine, and I’ll detail a few of them in the coming weeks. To start, I want to recommend a game I purchased for my younger sister. It’s called Trivillennial.
As the name is meant to imply, this is marketed as “trivia for millennials.” Because of this, I was a bit nervous about getting this for my college-age sister. Since she is part of Generation Z (now aptly called Zoomers), she did not seem to be included in the target demographic. However, despite the name, we found that the questions included in Trivillennial were right up her alley. In fact, some of the questions, specifically those dealing with memes of the past two or three years, seemed squarely aimed at her generation as opposed to mine.
The other reason I was skeptical about buying Trivillennial was its abysmal Amazon rating: 3.9 stars. Generally, you only rate and review a product if you have a strong opinion on it, which is why most quality items boast scores somewhere between 4 and 5 stars. A rating below 4 indicated to me that quite a few people absolutely abhorred this game. I almost abandoned the game in search of a better birthday gift for my sister.
Typically, that is what I would have done. But being quarantined, I’m not exactly wanting for time. So I ended up actually reading the customer reviews. The main complaint — pretty much the only complaint, which formed the basis of the spate of 1-star reviews — was that many of the trivia cards listed incorrect answers. Egads! Having written trivia questions in the past, I know that there’s really only one requirement: they have to have the right answer! How could the creative team behind Trivillennial go to market without double- and triple- and quadruple-checking all the answers?
Turns out they didn’t. Lost on all the negative reviewers was the fact that the answers are listed on the opposite side of the card. All the naysayers were looking in the wrong place. As long as you follow the directions in the box, you’ll have no problem locating the answers. I wish whoever wrote the Amazon page put this in bold type in the product description so I didn’t waste all that time doing due diligence. (UPDATE: Since I bought the game, the first Amazon bullet point has been changed to: NOTE – The answers are on the reverse (back) side of each card at the bottom!)
Trivillennial is a fun trivia game. Some of the questions are pretty obscure (how was I supposed to remember a bear breaking into someone’s backyard to sip a margarita?) but the multiple choice options give everyone a chance, no matter their generational cohort. Zoomer, Millennial, Gen X, Boomer, this game is fun for the whole family. And who knows, you might just learn something about culture today.
