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SwypeOut is a trivia game that borrows Tinder’s gesture-based interface. In this instance, swiping to the right answers true and swiping to the left answers false. We’ve already seen a number of trivia quiz games for mobile come out of the region in quick succession this year, including Almwajaha, an Arabized QuizUp, and Haram Al Maarifa, a digital mobile version of a popular local board game by the same name. SwypeOut is the latest such undertaking, and while the other two are in Arabic, SwypeOut is in English.

The story behind SwypeOut

The game was created by serial Lebanese Russian entrepreneur, musician- a pianist since the age of five - and overall geek Piotr Yordanov. He joined the Seeqnce Accelerator Program fresh out of college to work on the now defunct BaytBaytak, a map based real estate listing portal, and later went on to found Beepl, a contact management system or online Rolodex that imports and consolidates contact information from Facebook and LinkedIn, and tags profiles. SwypeOut is his third entrepreneurial endeavor.

Working on Beepl, he thought to devise an easy solution that would enable users to eliminate duplicate information coming from both platforms. His solution was presenting users with two cards of information, one from Facebook and the other from LinkedIn, and prompting them to either merge or not merge. Not only did this system prove to be very successful, but quite entertaining as well as he started noting that people were indulging in the process for unusually long stretches of time, sometimes doing up to 150 iterations at a time he explained.

Piotr felt that he was on to something. This method evolved further when he sought to introduce a similar change to the tagging system. In order to simplify the process, the app was made to generate suggests tags for each profile. Tags were presented as a card as well; only this time swiping left or right either rejects or accepts the tag.

And in about 48 hours, a productivity app had given birth to a trivia mobile game. 

How does the game work?

SwypeOut features a thousand questions, split over 12 categories: books, movies, series, lifestyle, geography, history, music, sports, science, religion, programming, and games. At the top of the selection page, you’ll find two additional trending categories that you can choose.

You’ll have to start with the random round, which is available for all categories, before you can test your knowledge in specific areas. Swypes can also be used to skip questions, buy more time, and unlock Difficulties. You begin at Explorer, before starting your climb to Apprentice, followed by Veteran, Immortal, and finally the GameMaster. The questions have been written exclusively for the game by a number of hired freelancers. This ensures that the content is fresh, unique, and relevant to the audience.

Rounds are timed and extremely fast, at sixty seconds each they leave little chance to cheat/Google your way through. SwypeOut presents an interesting mix, combining trivia, a genre usually associated with a brainier gamer crowd, opting against the more common multiple answers, and adopting a lazy one handed format made popular by a dating app. 

The game initially launched on July 17 for Android , an iOS version should make its way to the public this year too. The developers are also looking to add some features in future iterations, including multiplayer mode. It is free of charge. You can get it here. You must have Android KitKat or version 4.4 installed for the game to work.