E: The lovable monster quiz about (nearly) anything and everything.

Rigormortis

So since I saw the comp I've been working on this...which is about 24 hours as of this posting.



Ok, so those that know me, know that I love boring games. As such, quiz games are one of my favorite types of games to play. Think 30 Seconds, Trivial Pursuit and even [url =http://www.makegamessa.com/discussion/745/bear-chuck-prototype#Item_122]random silly things like these[/url]. I have found though that this experience is usually very boring for other players, especially if you move it to the video game arena.

The lovable monster quiz about (nearly) anything and everything is an attempt to use humor and juice to increase the gameplay experience of what would be a boring experience for most, and hopefully in the process teach and learn some new things while playing. :)

The basic premise of the game is to choose the correct answer from a selection of 4 and build your score as much as you can in 5 minutes. After the time has expired you will be able to see your final score, which is heavily influenced by how well you answer. There is always only one correct answer.



Please give it a play and let me know what you think. Also let me know if the download links aren't working for you.

Thanks. :)



[url = http://bit.ly/17gxnQc]Web Build[/url](I recommend you play this build)
[url = http://bit.ly/19RlmXm]Standalone Build[/url](There are known issues with the visibility of off screen things in this build.)

Gazza_N

I think it's well juiced - feedback's pretty good when you screw up or get something right. I had a good laugh at some of the questions, but I do wish there were more of them (understandable given the time, and soon to be remedied, I'm sure). It was especially confusing when the same question popped up twice in a row. :P

I see this as a fun little distraction when waiting in line or on the train. An online scoreboard component would likely appeal to those who like comparing numbers with their friends.

EDIT: I played the web build, fyi.

Rigormortis

@Gazza_N, thanks for giving it a play. I'm glad you had a laugh. :)

There definitely has to be more questions, feel free to PM me or just post them and I'll incorporate them. I need some more actual sciency questions. :P As it stands there are about 25 questions, but they have more than just the 4 responses. So even though you have seen a question before, you might not have seen all the (wrong) answers. :)

I'm a little bit torn on the repeating questions though, I think it's valuable that the questions repeat because then the player's "skill" in the game increases. It is however a huge problem that the same question can be asked an infinite number of times in a row though. I'm thinking that I should implement some kind of buffer system that will only allow a question to be randomly selected if it was not selected in the last 15 or questions or so.

AlphaSheep

Yeah. More questions, and avoid repeats. The time started dragging towards the end when I was answering the same thing over and over. At one point it asked the same question 3 times in a row.

I've got a question for you to add. It's one of my pet hates: "What does a rocket scientist do?" And the answers could be along the lines of "rocket science", "rocket engineering", "rocket baking", and stuff like that. The correct answer is of course "rocket engineering".

Nandrew

Given some of the questions I saw, I'd very much like the idea of this quiz being built around trick questions, mindscrews and little logical quirks -- there's a lot of humour potential and interest that can be generated from stuff that's more than just general knowledge, y'know?

I particularly enjoyed the question that asked about its own fairness.

Nitrogen

Haha, I still had 3 minutes left before the questions started repeating.

1. A human heart has "chambers" not rooms
2. Observation: The get-it-wrong hit was really vicious, especially with loud headphones.
3. You should shuffle an array of questions rather than picking one at random, that way your chances of getting the same question in a row drop to almost zero (it could happen once you've exhausted your shuffled array and built a new one which happens to have the same question at the front).
4. The fair question wasnt fair at all.
5. More questions:

- What does DNA stand for? DeoxyriboNucleic Acid
- Which wavelength is shorter - X-Rays, Blue light, Red light or Radio Waves? X-Rays
- What is the longest word in the english language? Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
- A bear walks south 1km, west 1km then north 1km and ends up in the same place. What colour is the bear? White

Tuism

- A bear walks south 1km, west 1km then north 1km and ends up in the same place. What colour is the bear? White

whaaaaaat?!
\

ProjectX

Dammit Ed it should be North 1.414141 km

FanieG

Neil Armstrong was the first man on Yo' Mamma.....Bwhahahahahahahahah. Only crit I could give is more questions (but that's already been said). You could consider adding, letting the player choose a genre of questions i.e. Science, Music, TV, geography etc. Change the score to $ Dollars $ to give it a bit of a Game Show feel.

FanieG

Could also add that each correct anwer reveals a letter at the top of the screen and for the last minute the player needs to solve an anagram. So 4 minute random questions and 1 minute anagram.

Nitrogen

Interesting... That would be quite cool, especially if the word was antidisestablishmentarianism

Nitrogen

@ProjectX Take your Pi somewhere else! This is a no-pi zone! ;)

FanieG

@Nitrogen - your anagram is.....buttertray....right.....right?

Rigormortis

Hey everyone, thanks for playing. :)

@AlphaSheep, getting the question x amounts of time in a row is unfortunately a thing that can happen now because it chooses entirely randomly. Will fix that at some point.

@Nandrew, I particularly like that one as well. :) I like the idea of including more of those, but I'm not clever enough to think of a lot of them. My question to you is though, would you forgo including any of the questions that are not like that? To me it adds a level of value to the game in which players can actually be learning about stuff. @FanieG suggested it, bit I think it would good if there where categories for something like that.

@Nitrogen,
1)It was late...and I did a direct translation from Afrikaans :P I'll fix it though, thanks for the catch.
2)Do you mean only the volume level? I though it might be slightly loud, but also that that would give feedback with impact.
3)Yup
4)It is unfair yes, but only slightly. :)
5)Cool, thanks. :)

@Tuism, because it's a polar bear.(Which live on the north pole)

@ProjectX, whut?

@FanieG, I did think about the categories while I was trying to type up new questions and it is really good idea. I think though that I'd have to move to a better system to manage the questions then if I add more attributes to them...but we'll see, I really want to do it sometime. I also like the $$ idea...I can create an entire meta game with that, buying upgrades and stuff outside the game. It won't work for the comp, but it's still neat. I also like the suggestion of the anagram. I think there needs to be something that breaks the quiz gameplay because it does feel a bit boring with no overarching goal in mind.

Once again, thanks for playing. I'll try and do some more work on it over the weekend and post an update.

Nandrew

The idea of teaching people is always cool and stuff, but I feel that you could use this to teach different *kinds* of ideas, like making each question a carefully-worded logic challenge or something that stretches the grey matter in ways that aren't just general knowledge recitation.

Though admittedly, I thought the answer to the self-referential question WAS "tremendously unfair" :P

dislekcia

A bear swims south 1km, west 1km then north 1km and ends up in the same place. What colour is the bear? White

Fixed... :(

ProjectX

@Nitrogen: not pi... hypotenuse = square root of 2

gresham

hehe scored 1911
I find the screen jumps when u lose a round a bit unsettling. Also the exploding monsters was a bit confusing (took me while to figure out that they're sort of bonus points...blame it on looooong day at work).
Now for the parts i enjoyed... quick fire questions was cool but as like others, i think a wider variety would be nice. The countdown adds a nice little pressure point

Rigormortis

@gresham, they're lovable...so obviously they're bonus points. :P

In all seriousness though I did make it a bit obscure to realize that. I left that realization for the final screen to have players play it again with a better understanding of how the game works. The screen shake seems a bit odd to me as well, though I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe someone with experience in creating screenshakes can pull it apart for me a bit. For now it's added to the to do list. :)

Thanks for giving it a play.

dislekcia

Also, @ProjectX: it's not a triangle on a flat surface, so it's not a hypotenuse. Each km stretch is an arc, so they're all the same distance ;)

Rigormortis

[url = Curved lines [/url]

Nitrogen

How the hell did you dig up such an obscure reference! :P

Also we can make this into a question for your game: Which is longer: a straight line of 1km or an arc of 1km? or to put it another way: Which weighs more? 1kg of feathers or 1kg of gold?

Rigormortis

Honestly, I remembered it(I just had to find the youtube vid). I watched it as a kid and that has always been one of the coolest cartoon episodes I've ever seen...an action game with quiz/puzzle elements.....aaaaaaw YEAH!

ProjectX

@dislekcia: so if we straighten out the curved lines they form an equilateral triangle? Cause that's the only way it would reach the same place... As far as I can see when we project the curved lines onto a flat surface they still form an isosceles triangle.

Rigormortis

@ProjectX & @dislekcia, I like this...keep going :P

Nitrogen

I found this:


They do indeed form an unequal triangle when projected on to a flat surface, but I dont think that is useful. Each arced side is the same length.

dislekcia

@ProjectX, @Nitrogen: Yes, none of the corners are 90 degrees. Having at least one 90 degree corner is assumed to get to the stage of calculating a hypotenuse... I'm not sure why you made that assumption, as the whole point of the brain teaser is that the same point is being returned to by exploiting the fluidity of cardinal directions around the pole.

The triangle is an equilateral one - the sides are all the same length. How are you projecting in your head to get to an isosceles shape? Are you getting confused by the meaningless longitude and latitude lines? Are you prioritising one vertex and leaving the others as "further" from the plane you're projecting to? Your projection plane should intersect all three points of the triangle.

Rigormortis

Minor update.
-Added in a few more questions.
-Questions will not repeat until you have gone through all of them, in which case they will repeat.

[url = http://bit.ly/17gxnQc]Web Build[/url]
[url = http://bit.ly/19RlmXm]Standalone Build[/url]

I'm planning on extending it some more by adding more of the suggestions in this thread, but I'm not sure if I'll have time. Please give it a quick play(won't take you more than 5 minutes :P) and leave any comments/suggestions/abusive remarks here. :)

Thanks.