🎯 Objective
Press Your Luck is a trivia and luck game for 2 to 12 players. Answer questions to earn spins, then use your spins on the Big Board to win cash — but watch out for Whammies! Whoever has the most cash when the game ends wins.
▶️ Starting a Game
- Enter a room name to create or join a room — the first person to open a room becomes its Host (crown icon); anyone who enters the same room name afterward joins as a player.
- Type your name and tap Join Game. If the host has set up a "Get to Know You" round (see below), you may be asked a couple of quick questions before the game starts — you can skip these.
- Once at least 2 players have joined, the host taps Start Game. This opens Category Voting, not the trivia round itself — see the next section.
- Before starting, the host can open ⚙️ Settings to change the number of rounds (1–4), questions per round, whammies-to-eliminate, whammies on the board, and whether dollar values show. Settings lock once the game begins.
🗳️ Category Voting
Before the trivia starts, every player votes on which categories to play:
- Each player gets 5 votes, one per category. Pick from the suggested list, search for a topic, or type in your own.
- The top 10 categories by vote count make it into the game (ties broken randomly). If the host configured a "Get to Know You" custom category, it takes one of those 10 slots automatically.
- The host can close voting once everyone has used all 5 votes, or force it closed early even if some players haven't finished.
❓ Get to Know You (optional)
The host can set up a custom "get to know you" category before the game. If enabled, each player answers a few short questions about themselves in the lobby. During the game, those answers turn into multiple-choice questions like "What did [player] answer to: [question]?" — everyone else has to guess who said what.
📋 Game Flow
The game alternates a Question Round and a Big Board Round, repeating for the number of rounds the host chose (1–4, default 2):
- Question Round: Answer trivia to earn spins for the Big Board (details below).
- Big Board Round: Take turns using your earned spins on the board — cash prizes, bonus spins, or special spaces.
- After the last round's board is finished, the game ends and final scores are shown.
🔔 Question Round
- A question is revealed and everyone has 10 seconds to Buzz In.
- As soon as one player buzzes in, everyone — including the buzzer — gets 20 seconds to answer the same multiple-choice question.
- The buzzer: +3 spins for a correct answer, -1 spin for a wrong or missed answer (never below 0).
- Everyone else: +1 spin for answering correctly; no penalty for a wrong or missed answer.
- If nobody buzzes in before the timer runs out, it becomes a straight multiple-choice question for everyone — correct answers still earn 1 spin.
- The host sets how many questions are asked per round (1–4, default 4) before the Big Board round begins.
🎡 Big Board Round
- On your turn, tap Spin to start the lights cycling around the board, then tap Stop to land on a space.
- Your spin count stays up while the board is moving, and drops by one when that spin ends.
- Every active, non-eliminated player is guaranteed at least 1 spin at the start of each board round, so nobody sits out with nothing to do.
- Turn order: in the first board round, whoever has the fewest spins goes first; in every board round after that, whoever has the lowest score goes first. After that, turns follow the join order.
- After you spin, if you still have leftover earned spins you may pass them to the next player in turn order instead of spinning again. If someone passed spins to you, you must use one of those passed spins before you can pass anything onward yourself.
- Board round 1 uses lower cash values; round 2 and beyond use higher values on the same 18-space board layout.
Whammies
Landing on a Whammy resets your cash total to $0! The host sets how many Whammies eliminate a player (1–4, default 4) and how many Whammy spaces are on the board (1–12, default 6). A player who is eliminated stays visible on the scoreboard but can no longer take a turn.
🎰 Special Spaces
- $ + SPIN squares: Pay the cash shown and add bonus spins to your total (spins only in no-dollar games).
- BIG BUCKS: Scans every space currently visible on the board and awards you the single highest cash value showing. The bigger the board values, the bigger the payout.
- PICK A CORNER: The four corners of the board are special spaces. When you land here, the other three corners are revealed and you choose which one to claim — you get whatever that corner is currently showing (cash, spins, or another special). No time limit on this choice.
- ADD A ONE: Prepends a "1" to the front of your current score. For example: $0 → $10, $500 → $1,500, $2,000 → $12,000. The bigger your score, the bigger the jump!
- DOUBLE $$ +1 SPIN: Doubles your entire cash total and awards you one extra spin. Landing here with a high score is a game-changer.
- TAKE THE LEAD +1 SPIN: Awards you exactly enough cash to beat the current leader by $1 — instantly putting you in first place — plus one extra spin. If you're already in the lead, you earn $1.
- $[amount] OR -WHAMMY: If you have at least one Whammy, you choose: take the cash amount shown, or remove one Whammy from your tally. If you have zero Whammies, the cash is awarded automatically — there's nothing to remove.
- WHAMMY: Resets your cash total to $0 and adds one to your Whammy count. Reach the elimination threshold and you're out of the game.
💡 Tips
- Only the host can start a game, change settings, or reset the room.
- If the host disconnects, another player can take over hosting after about a minute of inactivity so the game isn't stuck.
- If you get disconnected, rejoining the same room with the same name lets you reclaim your seat and score — refresh and rejoin rather than starting over.
- Player with the most cash at the end wins!
🎲 How the question pool works
- Questions are drawn from a shared pool. Once a question has been used in this room, it will not come up again in this room — so a long session keeps serving fresh material.
- The pool is tracked per room. Starting a game in a different room gives you the full pool again, including everything already used here.
- The host can wipe this room's used-question list from 👑 Host Controls → Question Pool, which makes every question available in this room again. That cannot be undone.
