Make a Quiz Game With AI: Questions, Timer and Scoring
Make a Quiz Game With AI: Questions, Timer and Scoring
Give Zugo your questions, the answer format, the timer and the scoring rule, and it builds a browser quiz game: one question on screen, options to click, instant right or wrong feedback, a running score and a results page. The build costs 6 credits, each edit 3, and the questions matter more than the code.
This is the genre where the generator is least likely to fail and most likely to be wrong. Interface, timer and scoring all come out clean on the first pass. The content is where the risk lives.
Where should the questions come from?
From you. Paste the list into the prompt with the correct answer marked, and the game is built around your content. That takes one extra minute and removes the only serious failure mode in this genre.
Asking a model to invent thirty trivia questions produces thirty confident sentences, and some fraction of them will be subtly wrong: a date off by a year, a runner-up listed as the winner, a plausible answer that is not the one you meant. In a quiz, a wrong answer key is not a bug people forgive. It is the whole product failing.
If the questions are about your own domain, a course, a product, a team onboarding, then you already have the answers and this is not a constraint at all. If the questions are general knowledge, check them against a source you trust before pasting them in.
Fifteen to twenty-five questions generate reliably in one build. A bank of two hundred is a content job, and it is better added in later edits so a mistake costs one edit rather than a rebuild.
What should the prompt name?
Six things. Miss the last two and you get a working form rather than a game.
| Element | Weak version | Strong version |
|---|---|---|
| Format | "a quiz" | "one question per screen, four options, one correct" |
| Questions | "add some questions" | the list itself, with the correct option marked |
| Feedback | "show if I'm right" | "the chosen option turns green or red instantly, then move on" |
| Timer | (unspecified) | "fifteen seconds per question, no answer counts as wrong" |
| Scoring | (unspecified) | "one point per correct answer, plus a bonus for answering fast" |
| Results | (unspecified) | "a final screen with score, time and which questions were missed" |
The results screen carries more weight than people expect. A quiz that ends with a bare number gives nobody a reason to play again, while a screen that shows which three questions you missed sends most players straight back for a second run.
Say the option count out loud too. Four options is the format everyone recognizes. Two options is a coin flip and reads as filler. Six options crowd a phone screen and force scrolling in the middle of a timed question.
How do the timer and the streak change the feel?
They are the two dials that turn a questionnaire into a game, and they pull in different directions.
The timer creates pressure. Fifteen seconds per question is a good default for general knowledge, ten if the questions are short and factual, twenty-five if they need reading. Ask for a visible bar that drains rather than a number counting down, because a bar is readable at a glance while you are still reading the question.
The streak creates momentum. Ask for consecutive correct answers to be worth progressively more, and for the streak to reset on a miss. That one rule makes the difference between the seventh and eighth question feeling identical and feeling tense.
Do not add lives on top of both. A timer, a streak bonus and three lives together mean an unlucky start ends the run before the player has warmed up, and most people close the tab rather than restart. Pick pressure or pick elimination.
If you want a calmer format built from the same content, the pairs version is covered in make a memory game with AI.
What breaks in the first build?
Four things, each fixed by a single edit at 3 credits.
| Symptom | Cause | What to ask for |
|---|---|---|
| Same order every time | No shuffling | "shuffle the questions and the answer options on every run" |
| Double clicks count twice | Input stays live | "lock the options once one has been chosen" |
| Correct answer always first | Options not randomized | "randomize the position of the correct option" |
| Long questions overflow on mobile | Fixed layout | "wrap long text and scale the layout to the screen" |
| The timer keeps running on the result | Timer not stopped | "stop the timer as soon as an option is chosen" |
The third row is the one that ruins a quiz silently. If the correct option sits in the same position more than it should, regular players notice the pattern within a round and stop reading the questions, which is the end of the game as a game.
Play a full run on a phone before sharing anything. Quiz games get opened on phones far more than any other genre here, usually from a message, and a layout that assumed a desktop window is the most common reason a link gets closed.
Can you use it for teaching or onboarding?
Yes, and this is where a quiz earns its keep. The same build works as a course check, a product knowledge test for a sales team, a safety refresher, or a language drill, and the only thing that changes is the question list.
Two edits make it useful in that setting. First, ask for an explanation to appear under each answer after it is chosen, one sentence saying why the correct option is correct. That turns a score into a lesson.
Second, ask for the final screen to list every missed question with its correct answer. Together, those two changes cover most of what a paid quiz tool does for a small internal audience.
A lead-capture quiz is a different product with a different goal, and it is covered separately in how to build a quiz app with AI. If you need email capture, scoring into segments and a follow-up sequence, start there instead.
What does a quiz game cost in credits?
A build is 6 credits and an edit is 3. Hi-Fi mode doubles both, to 12 and 6.
This is the cheapest game genre to finish. The interface is simple, the rules are unambiguous, and there is no physics or timing feel to tune. A build plus four or five edits (shuffling, input locking, mobile layout, explanations, results screen) is a complete project.
Free gives 5 credits once, which is just under a single build. Pro is $25 a month for 200 credits, which is 33 builds or 66 edits, and that goes a long way here: a team could ship a different themed quiz every week on that. Business is $99 a month for 800 credits. A simple build takes about a minute.
If the quiz sits inside a larger site with a landing page and a results page, that is a multipage project rather than a single build, and multipage pricing starts at 12 credits for the first three pages with 3 for each page after.
Where are the limits?
Four, worth knowing before you promise anything to anyone.
- Scores stay in the browser by default. A personal best survives a reload on the same device. A public leaderboard that everyone sees means connecting Supabase, which is a separate piece of work.
- Live multiplayer is a different product. A host screen, players joining on their phones and everyone answering the same question at once needs a server and real-time sync. Passing one device around works fine and needs nothing.
- Fact-checking is yours. The sandbox check confirms the build opens and runs. Nothing in that check knows whether the answer key is right.
- 2D and browser only. No app store build, no offline installer. The game is a link, and it opens anywhere.
Very specific logic gets refined through edits rather than captured in one prompt, and Zugo does not replace a development team on a complex product. For a quiz, that ceiling is far above what the format needs.
How do you get people to actually play it?
Make the result worth showing. A results screen that says the score, the time and a short label for the tier reached gives players something to screenshot, and screenshots are how quizzes travel.
Keep the first question easy. The opening question decides whether someone plays the rest, and a hard one loses half the audience before the game has explained itself.
Publish it and share the link directly. The project lives at an address like your-game.zugo.run, opens on phone and desktop with no install, and can move to a custom domain if it belongs to a brand. Where else a browser game can live is compared in publish a game online for free. Paste your questions at zugo.dev and send the first round to five people tonight.