Joseph Jaquinta, CTO, TsaTsaTzu
Amazon are back to releasing three skills this week. You can access these on the “skills” tab of your companion app. Here, then, is this week’s review of the new skills.
Craft Helper by Mike Solomon
Can’t remember exactly how to craft an enchantment table or a dropper in Minecraft? Craft helper can give you the recipe fast, and all you need is your voice.
This is an aid to the popular game Minecraft. It helps you play by looking up specific information for you while you play.
Ease of Use: 3 out of 5. The skill is simple enough, but it could have used some polish. As written, you can look up a single “recipe”, receive the answer, and it quits. If you want another one, you have to invoke it again. Also, you have to use their question phrasing. You can’t just say “bow” to find out how to make a bow.
Usefulness: 3 out of 5. I typically play Minecraft on a machine with dual monitors. One for the game, one to look things up in. Those playing on a single monitor system or a tablet don’t have that option. So this is definitely hitting a need. However, a recipe consists of laying out elements in a 3×3 grid, an inherently visual thing. The audio doesn’t always do a good job of describing it.
Novelty: 4 out of 5. A live game aid that you can use while playing a game is a great idea. Although there’s not much more that could be added to this for Minecraft, future releases could cover other games, and even give live updates on MMORPG type games.
Overall: 3 out of 5. Not something every Echo user will want, but there are several million Minecraft players so the scope isn’t that narrow. That being said, my family and I are avid Minecraft players, but still probably won’t get a ton of use out of this.
Guess The NumberMatt KruseWith Guess The Number, you must successfully guess a number picked by Alexa. After launching Guess The Number, Alexa will prompt you to guess a number between 1 and 100. With every guess, Alexa will tell you whether her number is higher or lower than the number you guessed. See how many tries it takes you to Guess The Number.
This skill is a slightly simpler version of the “Higher or Lower” game from a few weeks ago.
Ease of Use: 5 out of 5. The skill is very simple to use. All you do is repeat numbers to it. I tried messing with it by using negative numbers or decimals, but it caught it. It even passed the “fishwife” test. It’s hard to go wrong.
Usefulness: 3 out of 5. This is mostly a demonstration game. It really isn’t engaging enough for a lot of repeat play (unless you are a certain age).
Novelty: 2 out of 5. I’ve been assuming Amazon has not released my “Knock Knock” joke skill because they already have similar functionality. But here they’ve released a skill nearly identical to another one. That and this being the third number game there rates it low for novelty.
Overall: 4 out of 5. Although having less features than “Higher or Lower”, it plays better because it is more focused. It also rates higher than “Math Puzzles” by being actually playable. I would like to see a future version where the responses are a bit more varied. Slightly different phrases for “too high” and “too low” would improve engagement. Giving hints like “Oh, so close! But still too high” boost it even more.
Trivia Alex by FatmaN Development
Trivia Alex is a fun multiple-choice trivia game to play at home with up to 4 people and your host Alex. It includes over 300 questions from the world of pop culture, history, sports, literature, and more. To start, say “Alexa, Open Trivia Alex” and you’ll be walked through setting up a new game. Then Trivia Alex will start asking multiple-choice questions of the players. To answer, say the corresponding number of the answer. If you didn’t hear the question, say “Repeat question.” The first person to correctly answer 5 questions is the winner. New questions are being added all the time!
Ease of Use: 5 out of 5. The skill was fairly straightforward to use. By clever use of numbers, that is almost all it has to recognize. It does ask for your name, and it did have some problems with non-standard names. When it fails to get a name, it doesn’t have a good loop to get it right. It doesn’t drop the session, but you do have to nearly start over. It would have been nice to have the answer options printed in the companion app, but not being there may be an intentional part of the game play.
Usefulness: 4 out of 5. The questions are pretty broad, but not highly obscure. There are, however, only 300 of them. I played twice and got one repeat question. The multi-player mode is a nice idea, but it might have been better to put the limit at 3 points for a win. Five gets a bit long. However, if its drops the session, it does remember state and can pick up where it left off.
Novelty: 4 out of 5. This is well positioned for the canonical Alexa use case. Frankly, I have been expecting this sort of “answer by number” app for a while, but no one else has gone here first. Good use of reprompts and restarts means the author actually thought about this as an audio device.
Overall: 4 out of 5. This is a great app with a wide potential audience. Although, much like Trivial Pursuit, it suffers repeat playability since it only has a finite number of questions. That could be improved if the right answer is not given when you get something wrong. Hopefully if it proves popular, more questions will be added. Or it could follow a freemium/premium model and charge for a wider question set!
