by Paul Schulz

Over the last five years, six trivia games of my design were published — and even more are on the way, with many more ideas still in my head. It’s time to take a breath and reflect: How did I make the games, what went wrong, and what did I learn?

This is not one big diary, but six little ones. Put together, it’s quite a long read, so I split this diary into two parts. To give you a chance to rest during the long read, you can answer trivia questions after each diary…in the style of the respective game, of course.

In this first part I’ll talk about:

▪️ Scope — geography trivia with a cool gadget to show the solution

▪️ Quiziko — if you just wait, random wrong answers go away

▪️ Fake Check — half the statements are facts, half are fakes

Let’s start…

•••

Scope — with Arno Steinwender

In 2018, a few months before my first visit to Spielwarenmesse, the annual toy and game fair in Nürnberg, Germany, I watched a game show on TV with a geography segment in which players tried to locate a place with pins on the map. This was nothing new since GeoGuessr and similiar apps already existed, but they all relied on digital devices. I thought an analog geography quiz would be fun as well…if I could find an easy and maybe even fun analog way to place the guesses and show the solution.

I made a prototype with a map of Germany and questions asking where to find place names (cities and landmarks) or photos. Players placed plastic rings of three different sizes, and the smallest ring that included the correct answer got points. How to show the solution was basic: I laid a grid over the map and printed the solution on the back of the question card. That was simple, but not fun; I’m sure today I would come up with something more clever, and in fact later during the development Arno and I did find something — but how did Arno come into the equation?

There was some interest in the game, and several publishers asked for a prototype. I was thrilled — but then the catastrophe happened: One publisher remembered an older game, Im Fadenkreuz: Europa, that was extremely similar to mine except with a much better solution mechanism. I contacted one of the game’s co-designers, saying something like: “…disappointing for me, but you might wanna pitch your old game again. Here’s a list of publishers that are interested.”

But this designer didn’t just want republish his old game; he wanted to give it a makeover, and since we obviously thought along the same lines, he asked to do it together. That’s how I met Arno. We would become frequent co-designers, with five published games and counting as of late 2025.

We focused on two things: how do you guess, and how do you show the solution. We were not happy with just placing rings on a map. Sometimes you know that a place is close to a border or a river, and you cannot show that with a ring, so we experimented with ways to change the size and form of your guessing object: lassos, adjustable rectangles, necklaces, and so on…but nothing quite worked. (However, the necklace idea led to another game soon after: Outlines.)

Different versions of guessing: rings, lassos, adjustable squares

Adding to the guessing problem was the multiplayer experience. First, it was messy. When rings overlapped, they were moved accidentally, and with the lassos and other ideas it was even worse. Second, after two players confidently placed their guesses in the same area, others could jump on the bandwagon without taking much risk.

As a result, we changed all players guessing to having only one player use a crosshairs-like target to identify their guess on the map, that is, to use their “scope” to aim at the right location. That player scores for how close they are to the place they’re looking for. Meanwhile, all passive players have a chance to “know it better” by secretly guessing in which cardinal direction the active player is off. If you think the solution is east of the scope’s center, you play the east card and might get a point. You can also aim for two points by playing, say, north and east if you think the real solution is in that quarter of the map.

This solved more than one problem. There’s no mess on the map any longer. Additionally, playing feels different during the course of the game (active versus passive player) and instead of jumping on the bandwagon, players may take risks, deciding to play two cards versus one as a passive player, which is exciting. Also, the whole thing is much faster than guessing one after another.

Where was the first amusement park? The active player thinks somewhere in the UK. In which direction are they wrong? Solution: [o]The correct answer is southeast in Vienna, Austria[/o]

For the solution, Arno’s original string idea in Im Fadenkreuz: Europa was cool and playful, but it’s not precise at narrow angles. Just printing the solution on a card (as I originally did) was boring.

We were looking for a cool gadget, and we came up with a ruler that hovers slightly over the board so that you can move it without touching the scope. The ruler can be moved horizontally, and a pointer on top of it slides vertically. With this system, we can use two co-ordinates to point to any place on the map with millimeter precision.

Different iterations of the ruler mechanism

Lastly, we changed the map to Europe and mixed up the questions a bit. We’re not simply asking where a certain village is located, but where festivals take place, where historical events happened, photo-questions, and many more things.

With the prototype overhauled, we needed a publisher that could produce the ruler mechanism, which would be no small feat. Luckily, Arno knew from his Smart10 experience that Martinex has amazing developers. We pitched the design to them, they signed, and they delivered. The ruler splits into two parts in the box, but is stable and rigid when put together, which allows for a bigger map. The production and graphics are amazing. I love the clean, slightly vintage style.

Earlier graphic design

Final design

Scope has been published in Finish, Danish, and Swedish through Martinex’s Peliko brand. In 2024, it was nominated for the “Årets familjespel 2024”, the Swedish family game of the year, and in 2025 it won the “Årets Voxenspil 2025”, which is the Danish game of the year! We hope this helps with more localizations and new versions with other maps. (PM me if you need the contact to Martinex!)

Now it’s your turn, let’s play some Scope. You are the active player: Where is the biggest market place in Europe?

Solution: [o]It’s in Krakow, Poland. You can click here to see where that is — but then come back and read on…[/o]

•••

Quiziko — with Arno Steinwender

When we started working on Scope, I felt like I was joining in on Arno’s project (even though I had developed the idea separately), so I asked him to join one of my ideas as well: “Quiz-Survior”.

The original concept was that players get a question with two possible answers: A or B. Everyone who guessed correctly (the survivors) would get a harder question next, with three possible answers, and so on until someone answers a six-answer question correctly or everyone is out. I now understand that this concept was good for a TV show, but not for a board game. In fact, the core of this idea is similar to the British game show “The 1% Club“, which debuted in 2022.

But TV shows are somewhat opposite to board games: They are made to entertain the audience, not the players, even though some are certainly fun for both sides. Anyway, it was a terrible board game since wrong guesses were punished with long downtime.

First prototype boxes

However, the idea of varying the number of answers had peaked our interest. We flipped the concept around and mashed it all into a single round. Now players start with a question with six possible answers, and they can decide to guess an answer or wait. Waiting is a bit like the 50:50 lifeline in “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” with a random wrong answer being removed. With now five answers left, the remaining players may guess or wait again, and so on. If only two answers remain, the remaining players must now guess, and the same is true when only one player is left in the round.

The last prototype and the final product

Why would you guess earlier? Because the first players to answer correctly get more points, so you might want to take risks. However, there’s also an incentive to wait because the first player to answer correctly gets full points no matter how many answers are left. It is a nice dilemma. That risky part is how the design got its name: Quiz + Risiko (German for “risk”) = Quiziko.

But how do you remove random wrong answers? At first, probably thinking too much about Smart10, we made a complicated box with flaps and sliders — but then we found a more elegant solution that was also easier to produce: a mirror. We hid a wrong answer under each corner of the question card, and at each step of the round, players peek at a different corner.

Answer F was wrong, so it’s now covered

We quickly found moses as publisher, and they made an amazing product out of it. Quiziko got a few favorable reviews from German YouTubers and was off to a good start. Moses had a line of trivia games in this cube-shaped box, and they were doing well.

In fact, they were doing well enough that the publisher tried to build on this momentum by increasing the release frequency, which used to be one a year. Quiziko arrived half a year after the last one, and this did not work out because shops had not sold out of the last one, and shops don’t need two games of the same genre and the same price tag on the shelves. Trivia games of a lower price category are spontaneous purchases and need to be present in the shops, so sadly, Quiziko got stuck in the in-between and the distribution didn’t unfold as hoped.

But we and our playtesters still love Quiziko, and we have the licensing rights outside of the DACH area (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). We overhauled the design and made an updated English version, reducing it to five answers to tighten the game a bit more, and we’ve just started looking for publishers in non-German speaking countries.

Wanna try? Here is an English question. You can decide to risk answering early, or peak under a corner of your choice. When only two answers remain, you have to guess!

Look under 1: [o]It’s NOT C, moles[/o]

Look under 2: [o]It’s NOT A, apes[/o]

Look under 3: [o]It’s NOT E, finches[/o]

Look under 4: [o]It’s NOT B, spiders[/o]

Solution: [o]D! Darwin wrote his last book about earthworms![/o]

•••

Fake Check

A small criticism of trivia games I hear regularly is that once you get the solution, often there is no explanation. The reason for this is purely practical. Usually both sides of a card are used for questions, sometimes with hints and answer options, so it’s already difficult to keep the layout clear and understandable. There’s just no space for an explanation.

In my next trivia game, I wanted short, focused questions and space for explanations. The shortest possible question is a statement that’s true or false, so as a first step I wrote a few hundred questions, exactly 50% correct and 50% fake.

Good questions are the core of every trivia game — content really is king — so as a next step I trashed every question that too many playtesters got correct. I also threw out questions that weren’t interesting, and I made sure that the fakes were really wrong because it’s important that players don’t feel tricked. Whether the White House has 35 or 37 bathrooms doesn’t feel like an important difference. Saying 70 or 9 when it’s actually 35 is better. (It’s 35 by the way, although maybe less now.)

The prototype box, with the situation getting dangerous for red and black

True or false statements are nothing new. Of course, in trivia games there is artistic creation in the writing of the questions, but even so I didn’t want players to just say yes or no, then get a point or not. I wanted a longer tension build-up.

That’s why I came up with “the plank”: All players start on the first field of the plank. A statement is read, and players decide secretly whether it’s true or false, then they reveal the answer. Everyone who is correct stays where they are, while everyone who guessed wrong moves a step on the plank. If one player has moved less than anyone else, that player gets a point and everyone goes back to the start — and if one or more players fall off the plank, everyone else gets a point, then everyone goes back to the start. This way, at any point of the game you always have the chance to earn a point.

The first player to collect three points wins. That said, many people will play without the plank system and just ask the questions. That’s great, too; it’s a feature, not a bug.

The protoype and the much smaller final product

Fake Check has been pretty successful. It was published in a small package for about €10, and the concept is easily understandable — perfect for spontaneous purchases. BGG is not a good indicator for the success of non-English or casual games, and Fake Check is both. The game has only eleven ratings on BGG, but it has sold over 15,000 copies in two years while available only in the German-speaking market. Not bad at all.

Now I hope for localized versions, maybe in a bigger box with hundreds of questions (I have written them!) and a proper plank. I also think it would be a fun TV show (imagine people actually being pushed off the plank!), but I have no idea how or who to pitch something like this. If you do, send me a message!

Your turn to play Fake Check. I randomly chose the following statements from a pool in which 50% are true and 50% are false.

1. There are only two bridges crossing the Amazon river.

2. The speed of light was calculated by an English astronomer in 1729.

3. The FBI was founded by Napoleon’s grand nephew.

4. A day on Venus is longer than a Venusian year.

5. The longest recorded lightning was 767 km / 476 miles long.

Solutions:

[o]1. FALSE — there are NO bridges crossing the Amazon. At the point where people live, it is way too wide.[/o]

[o]2. TRUE — James Bradley managed to get to the speed of light with only 0.4% deviation.[/o]

[o]3. TRUE — Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte was a relative of the French Emperor.[/o]

[o]4. TRUE — the planet circumnavigates the sun faster than it rotates around its axis.[/o]

[o]5. TRUE — it took 17 seconds and went across three U.S. states.[/o]

•••

End of Part One

Thanks for reading! If you want to talk about my games or anything else, please get in touch! You can also follow my Instagram or leave comments here. I’ll be back on December 30, 2025, to talk about Lost in Translation, Quiz Challenge, and my SPIEL Essen 25 release QUIZ-O-METER in part two.

Paul Schulz