I like playing trivia games with friends. This became obvious to me during the COVID lockdown era, when Discord groups and co-op games became my main escape from the monotony. But puzzlingly, despite the popularity of trivia and quiz games, the options for solid multiplayer trivia games are scant. So I decided to build my own.
Lack of Multiplayer Options
You can find indie trivia games across Steam and other platforms, but most of them are simple affairs: 2D minigames with a set of questions, each with 4 options, as is tradition. For a couple of bucks you can test your knowledge against whatever the author whipped up, with varying degrees of effort and quality put into the product. That's fine, but that's not what we're after.
I wanted to play trivia with other people. Our Discord group had about 5 to 6 of us at any one time. For some reason, the magic number in co-op and small multiplayer games is 4, which is annoying to anyone who has tried to arrange game nights with a group of online friends.
Finding a robust multiplayer trivia game isn't easy. There are some options at the time of writing, but they're all with pitfalls that didn't quite fit my requirements.
The Problem with Jackbox Party Pack Clones
Perhaps one of the best examples of multiplayer trivia is from the Jackbox Party Pack. In this series of games there have been several types of trivia-style game, some more traditional than others. And they're good. But the problem is setup. Jackbox Party games are designed to be played on the TV in your living room or, subsequently, streamed to an audience. You can't just whip open the game and jump into it. Everyone has to get into Discord or some other program that supports video streraming, then someone has to host it and stream it, and everyone else has to use a 3rd party method to play, in this case a website. It's a smart design for party games, but it's overkill for an impromptu game of trivia.
(Above) Robot Trivia Funtime supports 6 players in party game style, but avoids the issue of additional setup.
Some trivia games on Steam that support multiplayer have tried to emulate the style of the Jackbox Party Pack series, offering a game client (for the host) and then an app for everyone else. Unlike Jackbox, these clients tend to require creating accounts or otherwise handing over more information to a 3rd party. They're just less convenient versions of the same thing.
Another problem with these kinds of party games is that they're limited in matchmaking capability. You have to have a group that's ready to go. Typically, it's not the sort of thing you can jump into by yourself.
DLC and a Lack of Customisation
Some other multiplayer trivia games that avoid these issues tend to turn-off players in another way: DLC. These games offer some questions initially, but then try to sell you a dozen question packs, usually organised by theme, to keep you paying. I'm not a fan of that at all; you should expect to get a solid trivia bank if you are paying for a trivia game. While it might be a good business model, it's not good for the player. As a customer, it's hard to know how much I'm actually getting when the store page is cluttered with DLC. I'm not against DLC per se, but in this case, it doesn't seem like much of a win for the players.
(Above) The winners are revealed after a round of trivia. But when it comes to DLC, who are the winners?
DLC is also a reflection of a lack of customisation. One problem with trivia games at the moment is how they are limited by whatever the developer included in them. This means that sometimes games alienate players by being heavy on topics and subjects that aren't broadly relevant. For example, players in Europe and Asia sometimes find it boring that some trivia games have "politics" categories which seem to be entirely about North American political history. There's a big, wide world out there, and it's not good enough for a trivia game to only reflect the interests of its creators.
So what's left?
Once you rule out games that are single-player-only, games that have restricted content, and multiplayer games that require streaming and 3rd party clients, there aren't many options that are still in development. And that's where the development journey started for me.
I want a trivia game that takes no setup, can be easily expanded, uses quick matchmaking, supports more than 4 players but also single-player, and has no DLC. And with a lack of good options, I've had to make it myself.
Robot Trivia Funtime so far...
So far, we've got a game out that meets most of the brief. It supports single-player, or up to 6 players in a lobby. There are also NPC bots you can play against, five of them infact, which can be added in any combination into private or public lobbies. Robot Trivia Funtime uses Steam Matchmaking, which makes it super easy to host a game, join games, or invite friends to play.
We've included an editor built into the game that allows you to create question packs, too. It's got some cool little tools including an importer that can be used to import spreadsheets, or you can just use the editor itself to write and save questions. It's also integrated with Steam Workshop, the idea being that you can create and share your own packs, or download packs by others (or you can keep your question packs for your own lobby). In that sense, question packs are theoretically limitless and community-driven, but of course we're including default question packs in the game and intend to add more with updates.
(Above) Creating question packs using the built-in editor.
Another important feature is customisation. You can enable and disable question packs to your liking, allowing your trivia games to be specifically tailored to what you're interested in. It's possible to mix and match question packs and have entirely custom quizzes. You can be a true quiz master.
We want Robot Trivia Funtime to have a little extra something to it, so we've broken the tradition of 4 options per question, and expanded it to 6, making guessing that much harder. In addition, we've made this game in 3D and want it to feel cute and comforting. In Robot Trivia Funtime, you get to play as a toy robot, and our current focus is adding player customisation options so you can dress your robot.
The goal is to make a better trivia game, and hopefully we're doing just that.
