Show HN: CurioQuest – A simple web trivia/fun facts game

[mfa]

I've been working on CurioQuest, a simple, clean trivia/fun facts game. It started as a little project for my friends and family and they've encouraged me to clean it up and make it public.

I'd love to get feedback from actual web game enthusiasts before adding the next batch of categories and questions!

This is not a commercial product; it's a labor of love that's still in development. It doesn't have all the planned categories yet, but there's reasonable content: little over 2600 questions, 7 categories, 4 levels of difficulty per category, 2 languages (English and Portuguese), PWA so you can "install" it on your phone or desktop.

[vunderba]

Did you use AI to generate the questions, use publicly available trivia, or write them yourself?

I ask because the second question I got was a poor one.

  What’s the name of the young Jedi trained by Obi-Wan Kenobi?

Multiple choice included both Luke and Anakin.

[mfa]

Quite a few are AI generated and even though I tried to read through all of them once I realized that often the choices weren't great, I probably missed a few :-(

That's a good example, and I'll fix it now. FWIW, I also have it on my list to add a feature to flag bad questions.

[Timwi]

I would prefer a mode without a timer. Especially on the explanation page after a question.

There are a couple questions I encountered with wrong answers. One question asked me to solve x/4=3 and then insisted that the answer was 24, which is wrong. Another asked: “if you have 3 apples and you take 2 away, how many do you have?” It insisted that the answer was 2, but since the question clearly states that I have three apples, I insist that the answer is 3.

Otherwise, great website! I like how well it works on mobile, good job.

[mfa]

This is good feedback, thanks! A mode without a timer is totally doable and shouldn't be too difficult to implement -- I'll add to the list.

That particular question on the number of apples also confused the hell out of me. I checked with Gemini and ChatGPT and both agreed on the answer. Not being a native speaker, and because it was suggested by a friend, I thought I should accept it. I'm sorry it's causing confusion.

[daliz]

Hi, thank you for this interesting project! Could you please give some technical details on the languages/tools/frameworks/libraries you used to create it? Very inspiring, thank you again.

[mfa]

Hey, thanks! The core is really simple: Django + Postgres, Tailwind CSS for the UI, and little bits of plain JavaScript for things like the countdown timer. I also used a couple of libraries like django-allauth for account management and django-storages for managing static assets in S3. The whole thing runs on AWS.

I have no corporate secrets here, so if there's anything else you'd like to know, happy to share!

[Madmallard]

Please don’t use generative AI for content. It will repulse people

[mfa]

Not all questions are gen ai, but I understand your point. Initially I thought that gen ai could be a huge help, then realized the questions weren't good and there were some mistakes. I tried to comb through them, but I'm only human :-(

[Architrixs]

great game, tho it feels a little slow to interact.. are interactions made slow purposely? i feel fast and rapid mode will be good for this

[mfa]

Are you referring to the interruptions from one question to the next that show the explanation? Those were added on purpose because originally I had this in mind for kids in the 8 -- 16 years old range and wanted it to be educational.

But I see what you mean, and it's no trouble to add an option for "rapid mode" to just blaze through questions! I'll add this to the list!