Andy Warhol once proclaimed that, “We will all be famous for 15 minutes.” Well, the window of fame has shrunk since Andy’s time, especially when it comes to PuzzleFace and the 20-second time limit that it gives users to guess the face of the distorted celebrity on their smartphones. Welcome to the latest celebrity guessing game.
Anyone who spends their life glued to MTV (hands up, come on) will have a distinct advantage when playing this pop culture-heavy gaming app. Sign up with Facebook or your email address and start playing either your online friends or a random match against one of the many PuzzleFace users around the world.
The concept is simple: pick a subject area from the list of ‘movie stars’, ‘sports icons’, ‘animals’, ‘modern music’ and ‘zombie celebs’ and then go head to head with your opponent in guessing what or who the obscured picture is. The pictures are warped, pixilated or occasionally zombie-fied and you have a 20-second time limit in which to guess the name of the person from the four possible answers on screen. The pictures become more clear as the time ticks down and you also have the option of three lifelines, including 50/50 (take away two wrong answers), reset the clock and reduce blur. You only have a certain amount of lifelines, however, and once they’re gone, the only way to get them back is to purchase them with coins that you win in game or buy through an in-app purchase.
As you spend more timing playing and winning, matches you will unlock other topics, such as ‘TV stars’; you can also view your progress on the leaderboard and plot to overtake the other players.
One element of the game that I really like is the fact that once your opponent has selected an answer, their avatar pops up on your screen over their answer – it may not be the correct one, but it hurries you into answering, which adds another time constraint to the match. Another fun factor is the celebrity facts that pop up during the loading time between pages, such as ‘Did you know that Ryan Gosling was raised in a Mormon family and was home-schooled as a child?’ (Damn my parents for sending me to school and not forcing any religious beliefs on me – think of the heartthrob I could have been!)
If there’s a celeb-addict out there that doesn’t appreciate this game, I’d be very surprised; its quick-fire style and smooth configuration makes for hours of fun. Well, 15 minutes, anyway…
