How to Play
The full rules: the prize ladder, the three game modes, difficulty levels, lifelines and the three achievement tiers.
Every game is fifteen questions of rising difficulty. Each question has four answers — A, B, C, D — and exactly one is right. A correct answer moves you up the prize ladder; a wrong answer or a timeout costs a life. The full rules follow.
The prize ladder
Eight milestones mark the ladder: $1,000 · $2,000 · $10,000 · $40,000 · $150,000 · $400,000 · $700,000 · $1,000,000. Fifteen correct answers in a row reach the million.
| Question | Running total |
|---|---|
| 1 | $1,000 |
| 2 | $1,500 |
| 3 | $2,000 |
| 4 | $6,000 |
| 5 | $10,000 |
| 6 | $25,000 |
| 7 | $40,000 |
| 8 | $95,000 |
| 9 | $150,000 |
| 10 | $275,000 |
| 11 | $400,000 |
| 12 | $550,000 |
| 13 | $700,000 |
| 14 | $850,000 |
| 15 | $1,000,000 |
The timer and your lives
- Each question gives you 20 seconds. The timer bar retreats as the question runs and turns red as time runs out.
- You have three lives. A wrong answer or a timeout costs one life.
- Out of lives means the game is over, and the winnings reset to zero (unless you bought an extra life in Solo).
- The timer pauses on blocking dialogs, on a lost connection and during win animations — you never lose time to the game itself.
- In Solo play, a wrong answer reveals the correct one in green before moving on.
Difficulty levels
You pick a difficulty before every Solo game and every System Challenge. The level filters the pool the fifteen questions are drawn from — the prize ladder, the timer and the number of lives are identical at every level.
| Level | Who it suits |
|---|---|
| Easy | Broad general-knowledge questions, suitable for any player and for a first game. |
| Medium | The default: needs real familiarity with the subject, but no professional knowledge. |
| Hard | For trivia lovers — precise details, dates and less familiar names. |
The three game modes
| Mode | How it works |
|---|---|
| Solo | You against the bank. All four lifelines are available, you can buy one extra life out of your winnings, and you can retire at any point and keep what you have banked. This is the only mode with a retire option. |
| Head to Head | Two real players, the same question and the same deadline. Whoever answers correctly first takes that question and the game advances immediately; whoever answers wrongly is locked out of that question and loses a life. No lifelines, no buying lives, no retiring. |
| System Challenge | Same rules as Head to Head, but your opponent is the System — a server-side behaviour engine with probabilistic accuracy and response times, not a perfect bot. You can play it as a guest, with no account. |
How a duel is decided
In both duel modes each side has its own personal pot — there is no shared pot and no draw. Your pot is set by the number of questions you yourself took first.
- Knocked out (out of lives) — your pot resets to zero. It does not transfer to your opponent; they keep only their own.
- Both of you survived to question 15 — each of you keeps your own pot.
- Both knocked out on the same question — both of you finish on zero.
- Leaving mid-duel is a forfeit: the leaver finishes on zero, the opponent keeps theirs.
- A lost connection opens a 30-second window to return; not returning in time is a technical loss.
Lifelines
Four lifelines, in Solo play only: 50:50 removes two wrong answers, phone a friend and ask the audience suggest an answer, and swap question replaces the current question with another. The first use is free; the second costs 25% of your winnings at that point; there is no third use, and only one lifeline may be used per question.
Buying a life and retiring
In Solo play you may buy one extra life, once per game, for 50% of your winnings at that point; with nothing banked the offer is not shown. You may also retire at any point and keep what you have banked. Neither duel mode allows buying a life or retiring — a dialog before each duel says so explicitly.
Achievement tiers
The game awards 90 achievements across three tiers. The three tracks run in parallel — a single game can earn several. Each tier has its own 3D win animation, and every achievement you earn takes a permanent slot on a shelf in your profile.
| Tier | Count | How it is earned |
|---|---|---|
| 🏅 Medals | 30 | Correct-answer streaks. Medal N is awarded for a streak of 3×N correct answers. The streak carries across games and resets only on a wrong answer. |
| 🏆 Trophies | 30 | Lifetime net winnings: trophy N is awarded at $500,000×N, after lifeline and extra-life deductions. |
| 👑 Crowns | 30 | Single-game results and elite-game counts: crowns 1–5 by the amount reached in one game ($350K · $600K · $900K · $400K · $980K), and crowns 6–30 by how many games you cleared a high amount in. |
The leaderboard
The leaderboard ranks players by lifetime net winnings. Your username, photo and achievements are visible to other players — that is the social side of the game. Guests can play without an account, but only a registered account is kept on the leaderboard; when a guest registers, the progress built up on that device is merged into the new account.