If you haven’t heard of the hit daily game Wordle by now, you’ve been living under a rock. I’ve been a strong fan of the game for a few months, but it wouldn’t be Wordle without it being a once-a-day deal. There’s the option of Wordle Unlimited, Wordle Archive,etc.But what if Wordle was expanded to something other than words?
Enter my new series, as over the next few weeks, I’ll be interviewing the people behind some of the best fan-created Wordle spin-off games out there. This week’s game: Quizl.
Quizl is best explained by the three developers themselves, which I’ll get to in a second. But first let me introduce them; Adam, Konstantin, and Ryan. They have known each other for roughly eight years. Adam and Konstantin are both from Quebec, with Ryan being the odd one out from Ontario. All in their 20s, they work on the game together and make a productive trio with Ryan in marketing and content creation, Adam in coding and debugging, and Konstantin in a little bit of everything. All of them enjoy working on the design of the game. “We all give our input on every aspect of the project,” says Konstantin, followed by Adam saying, “That pretty much nails it.” I got the closest to Ryan, who gave me the most information on what Quizl is. Here’s what he had to say:
“Each day at midnight, a new set of questions are uploaded and your score is marked out of 5. Similar to Wordle, there are stats and share options available to brag to your friends. We individually pick each of our questions and options, so that the user isn’t stuck seeing all your typical trivia questions all the time. This will not manifest into your typical trivia game. Instead, we will be monitoring and taking feedback to see how we can make this the best trivia game out there. Whether that means a pivot in game structure or adding difficulties, we don’t know yet. But what we do know is that we will be listening.”
He further elaborates on the plans for the game:
“We are planning to continue adding features, effects, and animations as time passes. But we want to do so in a way that maintains the classiness and simplicity of the site. We appreciate any feedback from anyone along our journey.”
Konstantin adds to this saying, “The game will run for as long as people enjoy it.”
The three decided to make Quizl together for a balance between work and play, according to Adam, “Luckily enough, I was able to find both in Quizl.” The boys talk about their time spent together over the pandemic virtually, playing games online, but wanting something more productive. With the Wordle hype, they wanted to create something more based on skill and knowledge rather than guessing and luck. They gave insight to the thought and process that they had, the visions that they had for the game, etc. “As we continued to work on it, things developed, but we stayed true to our core vision.”
More on the guys themselves, Ryan is a public servant working in finance, Konstantin is a web developer, and Adam is a freelance software developer. Normally I like to ask for advice on what I interview for, but these are no ordinary candidates, so I gave them free reign on what advice they wanted to give.
Konstantin: “I myself am learning the ropes [of game development] as we develop Quizl further. As for my career path of web development, I would recommend for people interested in the field to try out some online courses/tutorials to get a feel for what is involved and to see if they might enjoy pursuing it further. There’s an abundance of free content online on web development, which might save certain people from enrolling into expensive university degrees if it does not suit their needs.”
Ryan: “Don’t panic so much about school unless you want to go into a professional field where accreditation matters, focus your time on building relationships and learning about the industry.”
It was an honor getting to talk to these guys, as I’m a huge fan of their game. I would recommend it to trivia fanatics for sure, and anyone that wants a good Wordle alternative. Per request of my new best friend Ryan and the other Quizl boys, here are their links:
Play Quizl for yourself here: https://quizl.io/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/quizl.io/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/quizlgame
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thequizl