---
title: "Quizlight: a live trivia game for game nights, on a big screen and phones"
author: "@chris"
author_url: https://elements.dev/users/chris
published: 2026-09-30T18:27:21.325Z
url: https://elements.dev/demos/uorf312o/quizlight-a-live-trivia-game-for-game-nights-on-a-big
kind: post
format: article
---

# Quizlight: a live trivia game for game nights, on a big screen and phones

by [@chris](https://elements.dev/users/chris) · 2026-09-30

## Description

Hosts build quizzes and run them on a big screen. Players join from their phones with a code, race the countdown, and see their points and rank after every question.

Quizlight needed a big screen and a room full of phones that move through each question together, a fair countdown, scoring and accounts for hosts. Each of those is a part of Elements, so the agent spent its 21 minutes on the game itself.

**What Elements gave the app**

- **One game state for every screen.** A channel carries a snapshot of the game, and every join, answer and host action sends a fresh one, so the big screen and each phone redraw together. The answer and new scores join it when the question closes.
- **Players join from their phones.** A player types the six-digit code from the big screen and a nickname and gets their own game page. Nicknames are unique and a game holds up to 50 players.
- **Scoring timed on the server.** Each answer is timed in SQL from when the question opened, so points fall from 1,000 for an instant answer to 500 at the buzzer, with a short grace for the network. The question closes the moment the last player answers.
- **A countdown in step.** Each screen turns the server's remaining time into a local deadline once per question, so the phones and the big screen count down together.
- **Server calls as function calls.** The host's controls and the quiz editor call server functions straight from the page with `@rpc`.
- **Data and sessions from SQL.** Migrations define the game and seed a host login with three quizzes of ten questions each. Hosts sign in with a session, and each game's controls stay with the host who started it.

**What the project server gave the agent**

The project server runs alongside the agent and answers as soon as a file is saved: it type-checks the templates, TypeScript and SQL, applies migrations and reruns the tests, so every question came back right away and the agent kept building.

**What shipped**

The app type-checks with zero errors and all 31 tests pass. Every page works on desktop and phone.