Behind The Scenes of Legends of Trivia

Imagine a world of humble knights, roguish rogues, and valiant heroes… Now imagine them at your local trivia night… That’s Legends of Trivia!

Jackbox’s next trivia game is cooperative and inspired by RPGs. And like the trivia-defeating team you’ll find in the game, we had an amazing team come together to work on the project. Read below to learn more about what went into making Legends of Trivia.

Please introduce yourself and your role on Legends of Trivia.

Hi! I’m Nate Sandberg, the Audio Lead and one of the people who make the original concept pitch for Legends of Trivia! - Nate

Hi! I’m C.J. Tuor, the Editorial Lead and one of the people who created the original concept and pitch for Legends of Trivia - Nate

Hi! I’m Warren Arnold, the Director for Legends of Trivia.

How did you come up with the idea for Legends of Trivia?

I play a lot of tabletop RPG’s with friends, and I’m sometimes a little frustrated with the randomness of dice. Like I’m a legendary Yuan-Ti Sorcerer and I just entirely miss with my firebolt because I rolled a 2?! Ridiculous. So I always thought that a skill based test for success would be fun to try. That’s when I came up with the idea of using trivia questions instead of dice! Turns out Hector had already thought of this idea and pitched it at Jackbox years before haha! So I worked with him and a bunch of other team members to put together the final pitch version of this game. - Nate

Do you have any fun stories from making Legends of Trivia?

The first appearance of the Ogre in a company play test was really great. Up to that point, players faced the same monster design over and over as we uploaded new assets and refined the mechanics. There was such glee when he came riding in and asked his questions in his unique Ogre tone. - Warren

What makes the Legends of Trivia dev team so special?

Everybody on the team was dedicated to making this game as special as possible. Everyone had such great ideas for bringing this world to life. The dev team did a great job of taking all of those ideas and making them work with the confines of a trivia game. - Warren

What was one challenge you had to overcome during production?

The biggest hurdle was the overall balance of the game. We were merging answering trivia and fighting monsters and those two concepts can sometimes butt heads. What we tried to focus on were trivia types that required everybody to work together but also didn’t outstay their welcome. - Warren

What were you inspired by while designing the look and music for Legends of Trivia?

I always try to mash together a few different inspirations when I’m working on new music for a game. For LoT, I listened to the soundtrack from the original Final Fantasy for NES. It’s amazing. I also listened to the music from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. This was a great reference for the bard songs as well a big orchestral fantasy sound. And I listened to a lot of Medieval and Georgian Polyphony. I find this kind of music so beautiful and I definitely wanted to reference it in this game. - Nate

What is your favorite part of Legends of Trivia?

The ending. We knew what we wanted to do very early in production and I think it turned out great. I can’t share footage because that would spoil the fun! - Warren
 

Any fun glitches or unexpected gameplay moments that happened during production and testing?

Image trivia started out as the way you revived yourself from death. Players hated it… but I really liked the mechanic. It felt like you entered another game and most players just wanted to get back in. So, we made an Image Trivia category and found that it worked immediately. - Warren

What has been your favorite memory of making Legends of Trivia?

I had a great time at our recording sessions with Austin Packard [who plays the host in Legends of Trivia]. He not only did an amazing job with the voice over for the game, but he also had to sing a bunch of songs! And the music I wrote is pretty tricky in spots, but he absolutely nailed it! - Nate

My wife had a baby during development and if you buy the game, we’ll be able to feed her! -C.J. 

Honestly, the last part of production because the full vision came together. It was so cool to watch people play and enjoy something that had been in our heads and hearts for months - Warren

Legends of Trivia is a part of The Jackbox Party Pack 11, out on October 23rd on all major consoles! Wishlist now!