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Old Apes Around the Modern-Day Campfire: How Papa’s Quiz Came to Be

Papa’s Quiz is a quirky party quiz game with an active Twitch following. Developers Old Apes tell us more about how the game came to be.

Young Apes to Old Apes

Back in the 1990s, when we were teenagers, we shared a common interest (some would call it an obsession) in Commodore’s Amiga personal computer.  

Bonding over our shared interest in the platform, we formed the demo group “Tulou.” Together, we spent our teens creating “demos”: a combination of code, music, and graphics that formed a kind of coded music video.

When we reached the age of around 20, adulthood came knocking, but our interest in combining code, music and graphics remained. We all took different jobs in the growing IT-based economy and spread out around the world. We stayed in touch, occasionally competing against other groups of programmers whilst learning the intricacies of a variety of programming languages along the way. 

A couple of years ago, armed with 20+ years of professional coding experience, we decided to quit our jobs and follow through on the ambitions we’d been harboring since the 1990s – get together, get creative, and make games.

Thus, Old Apes was born, and our game Papa’s Quiz is the first (but not last) fruit of our collective labors since we parted ways all those years ago. 

Papa’s Quiz

The decision to make a party game was easy, we love party games, and there are too few good ones. The quiz genre is also close to our hearts. A well-crafted quiz game can be both fun and educational – a hard-to-find combination.

Papa’s Quiz was initially created with the Nintendo Switch, Playstation, and Xbox in mind. The console in the living room is the modern-day campfire, where friends and family can get together and have fun. 

As it turned out, Papa’s Quiz was a hit in the Twitch streaming community, with an average of well over 1,000 hours streamed per week since release. This prompted us to speedily add features that made the streaming experience smoother, a welcome addition to our workload.

Papa, the main character of Papa’s Quiz, is a mirror of us, the computer nerd that grew up and created a quiz game for his friends. He hosts the game in his living room, with his best friend, the robot Montgomery, as his faithful assistant.

Up to 8 players compete against each other in the game with quirky self-created avatars and taunting dances. You choose or fight for the category together, and the fastest and wittiest player usually wins. One round takes about 15 minutes. Statistically the average family or group of players enjoys 3-4 rounds per get-together – plenty of time for everyone to warm up together around the modern-day campfire.

For more on Old Apes and Papa’s Quiz, check out the official website here. You’ll also find Old Apes on Twitter here.

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