Why we built BIBL: a Bible trivia game families actually play together

The gap between 'knowing scripture' and playing with it

When I started MRVL Technologies, I noticed something odd. There were apps to read the Bible. Apps to meditate on verses. Apps for daily devotionals. But I couldn't find anything that treated Bible knowledge as genuinely fun to compete over, the way you'd compete over music trivia or history facts.

The problem wasn't that people didn't care about scripture. It was that most trivia games, whether Bible themed or not, are either too childish or too earnest. They feel like homework dressed up as fun. And they almost never work for mixed age groups. Either your eight-year-old gets bored, or your parent gets frustrated.

So we spent months working backwards. What would make a mum want to test her knowledge against her son? What would make a church small group leader grab a tablet at the end of a meeting and say, let's do a quick round? The answer wasn't better questions alone. It was removing friction.

Pass and Play: the thing we almost didn't ship

In the early builds, BIBL was mostly focused on solo play and online multiplayer. The thinking was: of course people will play online, everyone does that now. Then we had a user testing session with a family of four. They passed the phone around the table. One person read a question aloud while another answered. It felt natural. Social. Honest, in a way that staring at your own screen doesn't.

We almost shipped without Pass and Play as a free feature. Our metrics people thought it would cannibalize premium upgrades. But something in that moment felt right, so we kept it. Now, months in, Pass and Play is consistently the most-used mode. Grandparents play it with grandchildren over lunch. Couples use it on holiday. Church leaders use it at gatherings.

Free download, free access to the Genesis Pack, free Pass and Play. That's the entry point. If you want more question packs, there's a tier for that. But we didn't want money to be the reason someone didn't try it with their family.

Four packs, one philosophy: questions that matter

The Genesis, Kingdom, Covenant, and Legacy packs all follow the same rule. Every question on the free Genesis Pack is verified against scripture. There's no guessing involved, no weird edge cases where the app says you're wrong but you're actually right. That detail matters more than you'd think. Nothing kills a family game faster than arguing with the app about whether an answer was valid.

The paid packs expand the range. You get deeper cuts, more specific knowledge, harder challenges. But the same standard applies. When you're playing with family, you're not testing your ability to guess what a developer thought was clever. You're testing what you actually know.

We also built in ways to practice alone if you want to. Quick Match lets you run through solo rounds to warm up. Daily Challenge and Verse Challenge give you a reason to come back. But none of that is packaged as 'self improvement' or 'spiritual growth'. It's just more time to play, if you want it.

Why competitive play works for scripture

This is the bit that surprised even me. People assume that mixing competition and Bible knowledge is odd, maybe even a little wrong. But it's not. Competitive games force attention. They make you care about the answer. And in a family setting, that competition is almost never mean. It's playful.

A dad asks his daughter a question about the books of the Old Testament. She gets it. He doesn't. There's a moment where they both laugh, and then he pays closer attention to the next round because now he's invested. That's not irreverent. That's engagement.

For people who want to go deeper, Pro tier unlocks Lightning Duel. That's live 1v1 play. You and someone else, real time, racing through questions. It's intense. But it's also just a game. The scripture is there; the competitiveness is real; the stakes are none. That combination works.

Building for actual human moments

We don't have a social feed. No chat. No way to brag on a leaderboard. That sounds like leaving money on the table, maybe, but it isn't. Because BIBL is designed for moments where you're actually together. Pass and Play on a sofa. Lightning Duel with someone you know. Church group leaders running a quick tournament with their people in the room.

Those are the moments that stick. The mum from Coventry didn't message me because the app had a shiny feature. She messaged me because her son had asked to play again. That's the whole thing.