It's Quiz Time Preview: Breaking our Brains at TwitchCon 2017

With Twitch providing a unique ecosystem that allows for degrees of interactivity, it only stood to reason that indie developers would find their way to TwitchCon 2017. Shacknews wandered the floors of the convention over the weekend and stopped by Snap Finger Click's booth, where the developer was live streaming demos of its trivia game, It's Quiz Time, throughout the three days.

It's Quiz Time should immediately pique the interest of anyone who got into the old Buzz! games on PlayStation. Snap Finger Click is a studio comprised of former Buzz! developers, who were released back when Relentless Software was discontinued back in 2016. How much of the old Buzz! spirit does It's Quiz Time carry?

The answer came almost immediately as I spotted a disembodied party host named Salli. The Snap Finger Click rep noted that Salli would act as an "intelligent personal game host," adjusting to the players over multiple sessions. There wasn't quite enough time to note whether she had the same level of wit and humor as former franchise host Buzz, so the jury's still out on whether she'll prove as memorable.

It's Quiz Time promises to be the biggest quiz party game of its kind, offering over 9,000 categories across multiple categories. Some of the ones I spotted included catalogs of questions on American football and movie trivia. Some were straightforward multiple choice, while others required players to match choice pairs correctly. While Buzz! utilized proprietary controllers, It's Quiz Time goes down the Jackbox route and instead allows players to use their smartphones. This makes it easier to get more people in on the party, with the game able to support up to eight players locally.

And while eight players can jump in locally, it wouldn't be TwitchCon if there wasn't a Twitch twist. It's Quiz Time fully works with the Twitch ecosystem, which means a streamer can allow their audience to play along with them. Twitch chat will act as a collective contestant, with their answers comprised of whatever the majority types into the chat. In fact, the streamer can go directly against the chat in a 1-v-100s scenario. I was amazed to see how well the audience was doing for itself, with the Twitch chat posters all beating the humans present at the event.

With It's Quiz Time streaming on the Snap Finger Click Twitch channel throughout the weekend, there was a good idea of how much potential the game could potentially have. Their interface looks clean, the Twitch integration looks seamless, and as long as the game gets a healthy dose of quiz updates, it stands a good chance of becoming a party favorite.

It's Quiz Time will release on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One sometime in November.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?