Hosting a night

The three screens

There's a short film of all this at the top of this page — the whole thing end to end, from signing in to a live round with all three screens going. Two minutes, and it saves a lot of reading.

Every game works the same way, so once you've run one you can run any of them. There are three screens, and the whole thing clicks once you've got these straight:

1. The players' phones. Your punters scan a QR code and land straight in the game. Nothing to install, no account, no login. This is the link you share with the room.
2. Your console. Your phone or laptop. This drives the show — it holds the answers and the controls. This link is private. Never share it with the room, or they can see the answers and run your game.
3. The big screen. Cast this to the venue's TV or projector. It shows the join QR, the action, and the winners. Your venue's logo is the star of it.

One game has a fourth. Outrun the Queen gives you a separate Chaser link for whoever is playing the villain — see below. Everything else runs on the three.

Setting up a night

1. Log in at queencentral.app and go to your account.
2. Pick your game and create a session. You'll get your three links straight away.
3. Hit Email me these details and they land in your inbox — handy if you're setting the big screen up from a different device to the one you're hosting on.
4. Open the big screen link on the venue's TV (or cast it), and the console link on your own phone or laptop.
5. Let the room scan the QR on the big screen, and away you go.

Do this bit before doors, not while forty people watch you squint at a laptop.

Getting the big screen up

Open the big-screen link in a browser on whatever's driving the TV, and put it full screen. If you're casting from a laptop, cast the tab, not the whole desktop — nobody needs to see your notifications.

The QR code sits on the big screen in the lobby, so latecomers can always join by looking up (as long as the game hasn't locked them out — some games do).

Pick the show's look

Every game can wear one of eight visual themes — Marquee (the house look: a hot-pink cabaret stage with gold and pink bulbs chasing around the big screen, the default on every board), Studio, Broadcast, Aurora, Arena, Neon, Matrix and Sunset. Pick one from the selector in your console header and every screen in the room re-skins together, live — the big screen, the players' phones and your console all switch at once. Change it any time, even mid-game; it's pure look, it never touches the state of play.

A theme changes colour. The boards also have their own shape and motion — the flap tiles, the gloss, the turning board — and those stay whichever theme you pick, so they always look like themselves, just lit differently.

Sound

Sound comes out of your console — the device you're hosting from. If you want the room to hear the countdown beeps and the music, that's the device to plug into the PA.

The players' phones and the big screen stay silent on purpose: eighty phones beeping slightly out of sync with each other would be a nightmare. There's a 🔊 toggle in your console header if you'd rather run it silent.

There's a shared set of sounds across the games — right, wrong, buzz, lock-in, reveal, drumroll, and the win and lose stings. They're real recordings, so a correct answer sounds like a game show rather than a calculator. If a file hasn't loaded yet the game falls back to a generated tone, so a slow connection makes it plainer, never silent.

Outrun the Queen has its own sound on top of that. A driving bed under the cash builder, a heavier one under the final chase, a clunk when each side locks in, a rising note on each of the three reveal beats, and separate steps for your contestant and The Queen. Those are generated live, so they never arrive late.

Weakest Queen: the board and the music

You (or whoever's on the backstage pad) start the clock with one tap — the round music plays straight away, and an end-round sting hits when the timer runs out. Both follow the 🎛 Console / 📺 Big screen selector, so if the projector is the thing plugged into the PA, that's where the music comes out. The big screen is a money board: the chain climbs on the side as queens get answers right, with the countdown clock, the round pot (what's banked this round) and the bank (from earlier rounds) up top, and the round name in the corner. The questions aren't shown on screen — they're answered out loud — so the room watches the chain, not the words.

Outrun the Queen: casting your villain

This is the one game with a fourth link. The Chaser is a real person, not a bot, and they play on their own phone or tablet. Send them the Chaser link and nothing else — it lets them name themselves and lock an answer, and that is all it can do. It cannot see the answer key, and it cannot see what the contestant picked until the board reveals both at once.

Cast someone who enjoys being booed. A resident queen, the venue manager, last month's winner. Let them pick a name and an epithet on their own device — it goes up on the big board with a tally of who they have caught tonight, and the room will start booing on sight by the second contestant.

If their battery dies mid-chase, you are not stuck: the console can lock an answer for either side.

Outrun the Queen: running the show

One contestant at a time, four beats:

1. Cash builder. Call them up, start the clock, and read questions. They answer out loud and you tap RIGHT or WRONG — the next question comes up on its own, so keep talking. Every right answer is money on the table.
2. The offers. Three numbers land on the board: what they built, a bigger number for starting one step closer to the Chaser, and a smaller one for a step of head start. Edit any of the three on your console before they choose. They pick on their phone, or you pick for them.
3. Head to head. Three options a question, on the contestant's phone, on the Chaser's device and on the big screen. Both lock in blind and the board reveals them together — right answers step you down. Get home and the money joins the team pot. Get caught and it's gone, and so is their seat in the final.
4. The final chase. Everyone who got home plays for the pot. They start on one step each, get two minutes of rapid-fire to build a target, and then the Chaser gets two minutes to run it down. Every time the Chaser misses, the clock stops and the team gets one shot at the same question to push them back a step.

A pack needs both kinds of question — spoken ones for the builder and the final, three-option ones for the board. The console tells you how many of each you have left.

Outrun the Queen: reading the big screen

You shouldn't have to explain the score. The board is built so the room can read it from the back, and both halves of the show use the same trick — position, not numbers.

On the ladder, The Queen is territory, not a marker. Every rung from the top down to where she stands goes red, brightest on the rung she's actually on, so the red block grows down the board as she closes in. What's left between the red and your contestant is the gap, and the room will start counting it out loud without being asked. Your contestant carries the money — the amount they're playing for rides their step, so what's descending towards HOME is the number everyone cares about.

The reveal comes in three beats, never all at once — that moment is the best thing in the format and dumping it in one go throws it away. The board turns over the contestant's answer first, then the right answer, then The Queen's. Nothing on the ladder moves until that last beat, so a step can never spoil the ending. It walks itself at about two seconds a beat (adjust "Reveal beat" in your console, or tap Next beat now to hit them on your own timing).

In the final chase, the target is a line of boxes. One box lands every time the team gets one right (the free head start is dimmed, so the steps they earned stand out). Then The Queen runs at that exact same line from the left, turning it red box by box. A won pushback takes one back off her. The line stays up during a pushback on purpose — that's the moment the room most needs to see how much road is left.

Family Feud: strikes and the reveal

A wrong answer flashes a big red ✕ on the board (one per strike) with the classic double buzz from your console. When a pot is awarded or stolen, the STOLEN / on-the-board banner pops up for a couple of seconds and then clears itself — that's your cue to reveal any answers nobody found, because the room always wants to see what else was on the board, before you put the next question up.

The board flips. Every answer sits face-down until you reveal it, and then it turns over and lights up gold — readable from the back of the room, not a subtle shade change. The team that has the board is lit; the team on a steal pulses gold, because a steal is them going live rather than being penalised. Red on this board means one thing only: a strike.

Last Queen Standing: the elimination beat

When you hit Reveal, the room doesn't get the answer straight away. The big screen flashes black and white — "CALCULATING ELIMINATIONS" — for a long four seconds while every phone holds its breath, then the board slams up the casualty count ("3 OUT!") and every phone floods with its verdict at the same moment: green, you're through to the next question; red, you're out. Then everything settles into the answer and the names. The whole beat takes about seven seconds — don't hit the next question until it's played out, that pause is the drama.

It's scored, too. A computer churns away under the calculating screen, cuts out dead on the four seconds, and a hit lands on the casualty count — so the room hears the eliminations before it reads them. Like every other cue, it comes out of wherever you've pointed the sound: 🎛 Console if the laptop's on the PA, 📺 Big screen if the projector is. Turn it all off with the sound toggle if you'd rather run the room on your own music.

Why that's the answer

A question can carry an explanation, and it waits for the cull to finish before it appears — the room gets its moment of who's gone first, and then the explanation fades up under the answer, on the big screen and on every phone at once. Your console shows it too, under the answer in "Run the show", so you can read it out over the top while the room groans.

It never appears before the reveal, on any screen, so it can't give the answer away. Write one in the question editor under Why that's the answer, or let ✨ Generate write them with the questions. Imported question sets keep theirs if the file has them. It's optional, and blank simply shows nothing, so skip it when the answer explains itself.

This is where the logic rounds earn their keep. "You overtake second, so you're second" is the moment the room argues about on the way home, and the starter packs ship with the explanation already written for every logic question.

Live Vote: the reveal is the show

While voting is open the big screen counts every vote as it lands — the tally beats and a little +1 floats up, but nobody can see who's winning, so the room stays honest. Voters get a Vote locked 🔒 confirmation on their phone and can change their pick right up until the clock runs out. When you hit Reveal, the board builds from last place up — bars race, numbers count up — then holds on "And your winner is…" before the crown lands with the confetti. Phones get a little winner card at the same moment. Milk the pause; that's the show.

Your venue's branding

If your venue has a logo with us, it appears on the big screen and on the players' phones automatically — no setup. If you host at more than one venue, you can switch which logo is showing from your console. With no venue logo, it falls back to the Queen Central wordmark.

Write questions in seconds with AI

In the quiz games — Last Queen Standing, Weakest Queen, Family Feud and Hard Quiz — the host console can write questions with AI. In most games there's a ✨ Generate with AI box: type a topic (say "90s pop divas", "local drag history" or "a big night out"), pick how many, and it writes a fresh pack in that game's format. In Hard Quiz it goes further — when a contestant enters their specialist subject, the AI writes the questions on it automatically and generates a picture of the subject for the big screen. Everything drops straight into your list to review and tweak. Load a starter pack, generate your own, edit by hand — mix and match however you like. (This one's set up per venue; if you don't see the box, ask us to switch it on.)

You can't run out of questions mid-show — in any quiz game. Weakest Queen, Last Queen Standing and Hard Quiz all protect the show the same way: you can load packs and generate with AI at any point in the game, not just before round one (mid-game additions append — questions already asked are never touched); the console warns you when you're down to your last five; and if the pool ever empties mid-round the game deploys its built-in emergency reserve of general-knowledge questions by itself — the round carries on and the console tells you the reserve is in play so you can stock a real pack for the next round.

Packs you build in the admin Question Bank show up in the host console live, no deploy needed — and each game gets its own kind of question: Weakest Queen is pure question-and-answer (answered out loud, no multiple choice), Family Feud is survey boards, and Last Queen Standing is a quiz you order so it gets harder as it goes.

Print a table card

From your account you can generate a branded How-to-Play card for any game — with your venue's logo and your drag name on it — and print it for the tables. It saves you explaining the QR code forty times.

If something goes wrong

• "Game not found" or "Not authorised" on the big screen. Usually a stale page. Hard-refresh it (or open it in a private window). If we've just shipped an update, the game reconnects on its own within a few seconds.
• A punter can't join. Check the game hasn't locked its doors — some games shut new joiners out once they start, on purpose. Otherwise, get them to re-scan the QR.
• You lost your console link. Check your email if you sent the links to yourself. If not, create a fresh session — an abandoned one tidies itself up.
• The room went quiet mid-game. Your games survive a restart on our side, so a hiccup won't lose the game. Refresh and carry on.
• Still stuck? Email digitaldiva@queencentral.app and a human will pick it up.

Signing in

Sign in with Google if you can — it's the safest and there's no password to lose. We never email you a password. If you've set one and forgotten it, hit Forgot password? on the login page: pop in your email and we'll send you a link to set a new one. The link is good for an hour — if it lapses, just ask for another. (Check your spam folder if it doesn't land.)