Google's Game of the Year is a tough quiz on 2018 trends

With the end of the year quickly approaching, Google has decided to take a look back at the search trends of 2018. It's doing so with what it calls "Game of the Year," a quiz game that tests players' knowledge of 2018 pop culture. Most of the questions essentially pair up two topics to ask which was searched more throughout the year, and they can get surprisingly tough.

For instance, some of the questions I encountered were "What was the most searched painting of 2018?" and "Which US state searched for 'mega millions' the most." You've only got 10 seconds to answer each question, so on some of the tougher ones, you might find yourself running down the clock. Once you make three wrong guesses, the game ends and your score is tallied up.

Answer enough questions correctly and you'll be able to play Game of the Year's interesting bonus round, during which you're shown a series of topics and have to determine if they trended more or less in 2018 than they did in 2017. Once again, you're afforded only 10 seconds to swipe through as many topics as possible, so it's certainly a rapid-fire test of your Google Search knowledge.

While Google's Game of the Year isn't really some extraordinary gaming experience, it does offer a nice look back at some of the big topics throughout 2018. Remember the whole Yanny/Laurel debate? Never fear, as even that is well represented in Google's year-end recap. Personally, I learned which country searched "laughing emoji" the most in 2018, but in the spirit of the game, I won't share the answer here.

Google's Game of the Year is live now, so you too can guess your way through the most popular searches of 2018. Be sure to head down to the comments section to let us know what your highest score was, or if there were any answers that took you by surprise.