HQ Buzz

Building off the success of their viral live trivia game show, HQ was excited to expand into other live game experiences.

I was brought on as a contractor to design the gameplay experiences of several concept games they were interested in pursuing.

Throughout my 6 month contract, we explored several prospective games from live dating shows to social party games.

My first task was to answer the question, what if HQ made a Family Feud-style multiplayer game?

The result was HQ Buzz, HQ’s first team-based live mobile game show.

TEAM

Rus Yusopov, CEO HQ Trivia

Dominique Yayavi, Design Direction

ROLE

User Experience

Game Design

Visual Design

Branding / Naming

Team Creation Flow

HQ Buzz is a live team-based trivia game. Each team has 4 players that work together to answer Family Feud-like survey questions.

While in the waiting room, players can create a team by inviting friends or nearby players, or can existing teams.

Players have until the start of the game to assemble their team or otherwise will be added to a team at random.

Teams are randomly assigned a name and an emoji which can be changed while waiting for the game to start.

Gameplay

GAMEPLAY

Questions

Like Family Feud, the host asks a survey question that was previously posed to a group of 100 people, such as "Name something you do in the summer."

Teams work together to guess the top three most popular responses of the survey. Each team submits four responses, one from each player.

Once a player has submitted their response, their submission is locked and revealed to the rest of their team. Players cannot submit the same response as another teammate.

All players have 15 seconds to submit. If there is time left on the clock after they’ve locked in, they can suggest additional responses to their teammates who may need help, or just need a laugh.

GAMEPLAY

Results

Once time has expired, the Host reveals the top three survey responses.

Teams are rewarded points for correctly guessing any of the top three survey responses. No points are rewarded for incorrect guesses.

Points are cumulative and are displayed in the top right corner of the screen.

At this stage of the game, players can chat with their teammates through text or mic.

GAMEPLAY

Checkpoints and Elimination

Teams are ranked by their cumulative point value from previous questions.

Teams that are performing worse than their competitors can face elimination during Checkpoints.

During a Checkpoint, team’s fates are decided by a randomly chosen number. That number represents the percentage of teams eliminated from the bottom of the rankings.

If your team is eliminated you’re presented with an overview of how well you performed compared to your teammates. You can share those results or keep watching the live show.

If your team is safe, they continue on to the next round.

GAMEPLAY

Winnings

The Top 3 teams that receive the most points after ten questions are the winners of cash prizes split evenly between teammates.

Inspiration and Process

To prepare for this project, I spent hours watching reruns of Family Feud and meticulously studied all aspects of the gameplay and strategy. I wanted to understand what aspects of the game would transition well to a live mobile app, and what would need to be adjusted.

While doing my research, I fell in love with the iconic set designs of retro gameshows. I was inspired by elements like 3D typography, flashing lights, and colorful sets and knew I wanted to modernize them as part of the visual language of the app.