Varianty game show

The show

Varianty ("Options") is a game show on the Ukrainian YouTube channel Tochka Zboru where players hunt for the truth among each other's fake answers and try to pass their own off as the real one. Each round, the host asks a question, every player writes a made-up answer, and then everyone votes on which option is the true one. A player scores for the right answer and for every opponent who picks their option. The final is a separate round with its own answering queue.

What I built

I built one system with three interfaces, all in sync:

• player tablets — write an answer, vote, pick a spot in the final's queue;
• the broadcast screen — what viewers see: the question, the options, the results;
• the host's control panel — a web operator panel on the host's laptop that runs the game phase by phase: intro, question, voting, results.

Everything syncs over WebSockets, so no screen lags behind another during a take. I designed the panel so the host can run the game mid-shoot without extra steps: big buttons, few actions, any mistake undone with a single click.

The backend is built on Payload CMS with a PostgreSQL database and keeps episodes, rounds, questions, answers and scores. It all runs on Railway.

My role

All of it: the database schema, the backend, three interfaces, screen sync and deployment. On set, I'm responsible for keeping the system running.