Create a quiz game

Whether for work or play, quiz games are fun. Jeopardy-like games or just quizzes can teach and entertain at the same time.

(Note that “Jeopardy” is a trademark of Sony Pictures, and shouldn’t be used without permission.)

You can use exit animation and a trigger to create the quiz so that when you click a box containing a question (or the answer if you start with answers), the box beneath it is revealed.

Using this technique, you can create the entire game on one slide. It’s slick but a little complicated to create and there’s also a bug that I’ll describe later that sometimes spoils the fun. The basic idea is to have 2 or 3 AutoShapes on top of each other. You click the top one and it exits (disappears with some animation effect), so you see the second one. You can go to a third level as well. For example, in a Jeopardy-like game, you’d have a dollar amount (or number of points) on top, the answer next, and the question on the bottom.

In the steps below, to avoid copying Jeopardy too much and for the sake of simplicity, I use two layers of AutoShapes. My questions are on top and the answers are underneath. I chose a safety quiz theme. You could give 10 points for each right answer.

Disclaimer: I took my questions and answers from various sources, but I’m not responsible for the information on the quiz. Don’t rely on the answers in this quiz!
1. Create your slide and add titles, and topics, and graphics around the edges.

2. Draw a rectangle or other AutoShape and place it just under the leftmost topic. (I used the Bevel basic shape.) Format it however you want.
3. Copy and paste the AutoShape. (Paste it twice if you want three levels.) The two shapes will overlap. Drag the top shape so that it overlaps the first shape only slightly.

4. Right-click the top shape and choose Add Text. Enter the text for the top layer. Do the same for the bottom layer.

5. Select the top AutoShape and choose Slide Show>Custom Animation. Click Add Effect and choose Exit>Blinds (or whatever effect you want). I set the direction to Horizontal and the speed to Fast.
6. Find where the AutoShape is listed in the Custom Animation pane. Note its “Custom” number. Click it’s down arrow and choose Timing.
7. Click the Triggers button if nothing appears below it. You should now see two options. Choose Start Effect on Click of and choose the selected AutoShape (listed by “Custom” number) from the drop-down list. If you have 3 layers, do the same for the middle layer.

8. Select both AutoShapes, choose Draw>Align or Distribute>Align Center and do it again for Align Middle to place them exactly on top of each other. If necessary, move them together into the proper place on the slide. (Hint: Press Ctrl and use the arrow keys to nudge them slightly.)

Go into Slide Show view and test your animation. If it works, repeat steps 2-8 for the rest of the questions.

Test everything before you use it. Have fun!

The bug is that if you have 3 or more layers, the hot spot where you can click the AutoShape seems to get smaller as you click through the layers and you sometimes go to the next slide instead of triggering the animation.

Thanks to Echo’s Jeopardy page for the concept.

PowerPoint for Teachers: Dynamic Presentations and Interactive Classroom Projects has a complete chapter on creating games in PowerPoint and two chapters on creating quizzes.