Everything Quiz is a unique 3D browser-based game built in Niantic Studio that transforms the world around you into a quiz. Just point your camera, snap a pic, and get a context-aware multiple-choice question—anything from the objects in your room to the books on your shelf can become a brain teaser. It’s a simple, clever idea made possible with real-time screenshot capture, AI-powered question generation, and smooth UI built entirely in the browser.

We caught up with Ethan to learn how this interactive experience came together, how AI was integrated, and how his team balanced accessibility, technical complexity, and game design to bring this vision to life.

What inspired you to create Everything Quiz?
We were inspired by the idea of merging AI and AR in a way that wasn’t just visual, but transformed how people interact with the world. AR lets you bring content into your space, but what if your space could shape the content?

That idea led us to use multimodal large language models to analyze the world and then generate quiz questions from it. It felt like the perfect way to showcase how real-time context can drive gameplay. And it made for a flexible experience, one that can be both educational and fun, depending on where you point your camera.

How did 8th Wall Studio help bring your vision to life?

8th Wall Studio was essential because it allowed us to build for the web and reach the widest audience possible. That was a major goal for us. We wanted to remove as many barriers as possible and make it easy to play the game from anywhere, on any device.

On the technical side, we used XR8 for camera capture and screenshots, and Studio’s ECS system let us structure the UI and gameplay logic exactly how we wanted. The TypeScript support made development smoother, especially for things like managing answer validation, event listeners, and tracking scores in real time.

We also made API calls to Gemini to generate the quiz questions based on what was captured. Being able to connect those backend calls into Studio’s front-end game loop was a big unlock.

What challenges did you face during development?

One of the main challenges was handling 2D UI that stayed fixed to the screen. There weren’t a ton of examples for that in Studio at the time, especially for buttons that needed to work like traditional mobile UI. We had to figure out how to capture click interactions on those overlays, and this line ended up solving that:

world.events.addListener(component.eid, 'click', handleInteraction)

Another issue was with XR8 initialization. We ran into a few undefined errors when trying to access the camera pipeline too early, but adding this block resolved it:

XR8.initialize().then(() => {
  XR8.addCameraPipelineModule(XR8.CanvasScreenshot.pipelineModule())
  XR8.CanvasScreenshot.configure({ maxDimension: 640, jpgCompression: 50 })
})

Once we had that working, the rest of the logic came together pretty quickly.

What were the key steps in building Everything Quiz?

Here’s what helped us most:

• Start with a strong hook – We focused on what made the game different: the ability to generate questions from any image in the real world. That gave us a clear direction from the start.
  
• Lean into AR’s strengths – We wanted the camera to feel meaningful, not just decorative. Having the game depend on your surroundings helped us highlight AR’s unique potential.
• Use the right APIs – Gemini was a great fit for generating questions. We structured the API to return one prompt and four answers with a delimiter, so Studio could parse and display them quickly.
• Optimize for the platform – Since this was a browser-based experience, we paid close attention to performance and UI layout. Everything had to load quickly and work smoothly on mobile.
  

What advice would you give to other developers using 8th Wall Studio?

Spend time understanding the platform and how it works with web development in general. If you know TypeScript, JavaScript, and a bit of CSS, you’ll be in a great place.

Make use of Studio’s component-based architecture—it helps keep your logic modular and easier to debug. Also, replayability really matters. We built in a scoring system and tracked best scores across sessions to give players something to improve on.

Lastly, don’t underestimate social features. Even if it’s just leaderboards or shareable scores, those small things make the game more fun and competitive, especially in AR, where experiences are naturally communal.

Where do you see the future of AR—and how does 8th Wall Studio fit into that vision?

I think AR is going to become more and more blended into everyday interactions—not just in gaming, but in education, communication, and even shopping. The key is to keep it accessible.

That’s where 8th Wall Studio shines. It’s web-based, it’s powerful, and it gives developers access to features like VPS and AI integrations without the overhead of app development. It’s already making AR more mainstream by removing friction, and I think that’s exactly what the space needs.

Try it for yourself

 

Everything Quiz is a great example of how Studio can be used to combine AI, real-time inputs, and smart UI into a dynamic browser-based game. Whether you're looking to build something educational, social, or just fun, this project shows how far a simple idea can go with the right tools.

Explore their sample projects:

• Gemini Image Sample Generation: This project is an example of how to use Niantic Studio and Gemini to pull images from the user screen and get textual feedback from Gemini.
• Gemini Text Sample Generation: This project is an example of how to use Niantic Studio and Gemini to generate text from the LLM.
  

Have questions about the build? Want to try something similar? Join our developer community on Discord to get support and connect with fellow creators.