Game Ideas: Scribble Quiz

This idea is a party game for 2-4 players, gathered around one screen, based on drawing and guessing. There are a bunch of entries in the Jackbox series like this, and the central idea isn’t dissimilar to board games like Pictionary.

Some differences here are the ideas for the rounds involved in the game and the fact that the intention is for all players to gather around one console using game controllers – not phones.

I came up with this concept a few years ago thinking that we’d make a game like this here at Chequered Ink – but I’m probably not going to do it any time soon so I thought I’d share it here to inspire you!

A Party Game At Its Core

Scribble Quiz would be a party game where players compete through several rounds of drawing and guessing to get the most points. The title screen (above) reflects this with a gigantic button for starting a “party mode” game.

Entering party mode gives way to a lobby screen, where players are invited to draw a picture of themselves to use as their avatar for this round.

Players are drawing with a regular game controller’s control stick and face buttons – likely giving way to some hilariously bad and wobbly images.

Round 1 – Quickfire Guessing

Players have 30 seconds to guess the subject of a drawing from a set of multiple choice options. These drawings would be shown as a gradual animation, with players able to guess earlier to gain more points.

For this round the drawings would be baked into the game by the developers. It’s a good ice-breaker before the players have to dive in to drawing their own images.

The image above shows how the screen would look once the players have all made their guesses.

The game might show 4-5 questions in this round so that it lasts a couple of minutes in total.

Between Rounds

Between rounds the players’ current scores would show on a leader board. This would, of course, have a bunch of juice and animations with players gaining points and overtaking each other to make it more exciting.

Round 2 – The Copycat Round

In round 2, the game shows a pre-made drawing in the center of the screen. Players are invited to copy the image as closely as they possibly can in 30 seconds.

When the time is over, the players’ drawings are graded based on their similarity to the original drawing.

Personally, I would do this using a very simple grid system like I did in my jam game Scribb. You do not need some form of AI for this when the images are this simple! (I know some people will have gone that route in their minds).

Players gain points based on the accuracy of their drawing, with the overall winner getting some bonus points.

Round 3 – Where in the World?

Players are shown an incredibly badly drawn landmark and must guess its location on a map. They score points based on their proximity to the real location, with the winner getting some bonus points.

There’s a category of questions exactly like this in our single-player quiz game Revolver and Co. The questions don’t need to be restricted to geography! Instead of guessing the location on a map, you could be guessing the whereabouts of an organ in the human body, or any number of other things.

Round 4 – Look Away!

Finally, we get to the meat of players drawing for themselves!

In this round, players would take it in turns to draw an image that the other players must guess from a series of multiple choice answers.

For the guessing players, it works just like round 1. The faster they guess, the more points they get.

The player doing the drawing will get more points if the other players guess correctly – giving them an incentive to draw well.

At the beginning of this round, the “guessers” would be told to look away while the “drawer” is shown their prompt. We’re operating on trust here!

In a 4 player game, each player would get to draw only once. With fewer players you might choose to offer them more drawings each in this round.

Final Round – Inspire!

This round would be a bonus round. Players are shown an adjective like “Spiky” or “Round” and have 30 – 60 seconds to draw a picture matching the adjective.

Once the time is up, players would then vote for which image they liked best (they can’t vote for their own).

In a 2 player game, it’s possible the game could award points automatically. For example, for a “Spiky” image the game might detect how many sudden, jerky movements each player makes when drawing and award points accordingly.

Since this round would be extremely subjective, it should award the fewest points. It represents a sort of wind-down for the end of the game.

Final Results

At the end of the game, the leader board screen would pop up again. Only this time, imagine throwing a bunch of big animations and sound effects to celebrate the end of the game.

You’ll probably want tumbling confetti and some brass horns or something!

And that’s the core of the party game as I envisioned it a few years ago. I’d be totally interested to see someone build on these ideas.

Free Drawing Mode

You’ll have noticed on the title screen image above there is a button for “Free Drawing Mode”. Simply put, this would be a very basic painting screen where players can practice drawing using the same controls as the main game play.

It basically exists to allow a person to play the game in single player mode if they’re in the mood for it but they aren’t currently hanging out with friends. You could also just add CPU characters to the main quiz mode to solve the same problem.

That’s all for now, I hope some of you out there find this useful for coming up with ideas for your own games!