It is a rare day where I doff my hat in awe of someone who can create a game that redefines the word “sadistic”, but today is one such day.
As part of a large order from Amazon UK I mentioned in the [earlier QI post](https://vjarmy.com/archives/2007/02/a_bit_obsessed_with_qi.php), I ordered the [QI Interactive DVD Game](http://www.amazon.co.uk/QI-Interactive-Stephen-Fry/dp/B000BHZ1FG/). I’ve spent some time playing it over this terribly long weekend, and I have been both shamed and humbled. The game is terribly, terribly evil, and I wish to illustrate why.
The point of the game is to collect the seven letters hidden on the disc and anagram them into the appropriate word, can then be entered into [the appropriate spot on the QI website](http://qi.com/game/) to be redeemed for a prize of some sort.
I like using OmniGraffle, so I figured the best way to explain how the game works is through diagrams. These little fluffy clouds represent our seven letters.
Each letter is associated with a “door” on the DVD. Each door contains a path which contains fifty multiple choice questions. Each question has four to eight possible answers. So in our diagram, we’ll connect our start point to the end point with an arrow that contains fifty midpoints.
Merely struggling through 50 questions would be tedious but not *interesting*, so to spice things up, some questions have more than one correct answer. A right answer is treated like a right answer – Stephen Fry congratulates you and likely gives you some trivia about why or how your answer is right.
But herein lies the catch. While more than one answer can be considered right, some of them are considerably less *interesting*. And if you choose a less than interesting answer, you will be led through a number of different questions in some other direction to eventually be told that one of your previous answers were not the most interesting, and so you are being unceremoniously dumped *back to the beginning of the leg*.
These are being added to the diagram as red paths ending in pitchforks – although, again, they are not any different from the regular branches in look or feel.
Of course, these multi-answer questions don’t merely appear in the regular track – they appear once you’ve gone off the beaten path as well. Let’s add these in blue:
Oh, yeah, and you have to do this seven times:
Again, this is a simplified diagram – I have no real way of knowing how many false branches their are per path.
So, cheers to the QI elves for probably the most frustrating game since [Takeshi’s Challenge](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqV7e5xLERU). I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.
EDITED TO ADD: There is also a fair chance that I’m just bad at these sorts of things and/or have rotten luck. Katie managed to trounce her way through two straight paths without a single misstep. She is an impressive lady.