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50 free Horizon Zero Dawn trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Horizon Zero Dawn was the riskiest of around 40 pitches Guerrilla Games collected in 2010 — a lush post-post-apocalyptic America, robot dinosaurs and a red-headed huntress — and it became the studio's first new property since Killzone and one of PlayStation's biggest franchises, with more than 24 million copies sold and a film in development at Columbia Pictures. These 50 questions cover the game from pitch to remaster: Aloy, Rost and the Proving; the Nora, the Carja and the Eclipse; GAIA, HADES, Ted Faro and Elisabet Sobeck; the Thunderjaw, the Tallnecks and the animals that inspired them; the Decima engine, the anthropologists and the Delft roboticists; Ashly Burch, Lance Reddick and Joris de Man; The Frozen Wilds, the PC port, the Nixxes remaster, Lego Horizon Adventures and the awards. Easy questions cover the heroine, the machines and the studio; the hard tier asks about budgets, outsourcing partners and instruments invented for the score. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss. Play it solo or print it for a games-night round.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which studio developed Horizon Zero Dawn?
Guerrilla Games
The Amsterdam studio had made nothing but Killzone shooters since 2004.
Q 02What is the name of the huntress the player controls?
Aloy
She is a clone of the scientist Elisabet Sobeck, created by GAIA to one day destroy HADES.
Q 03In which year was the game released on PlayStation 4?
2017
It had been planned for 2016 and was delayed for polish; North America got it on 28 February.
Q 04The game was the studio's first new property since which 2004 series?
Killzone
Development began in 2011 after Killzone 3 shipped; the bulk of staff joined after Shadow Fall in 2013.
Q 05What is the name of the game engine, originally built for the studio's 2013 shooter?
Decima
The team had to build new streaming and level-editing systems to turn a shooter engine into an open-world one.
Q 06Who voices Aloy?
Ashly Burch
Hannah Hoekstra provided Aloy's likeness and Amanda Piery did the motion capture.
Q 07Which actor, later of John Wick fame, was in the game's cast?
Lance Reddick
He played Sylens; after his death in 2023 Tim Russ took the role in Lego Horizon Adventures.
Q 08Who was the game's lead composer?
Joris de Man
The Flight, Niels van der Leest and Jonathan Williams shared the workload; Julie Elven was the main vocalist.
Q 09In which century is the story set?
The 31st
The advanced predecessors are remembered only as the 'Old Ones'.
Q 10What is the phenomenon that made the machines aggressive toward humans called?
The Derangement
It was GAIA losing control of her terraforming network after a failed attempt to self-destruct and stop HADES.
Q 11Which matriarchal tribe casts Aloy out at birth?
The Nora
The patriarchal, tech-embracing Carja were written as their deliberate opposite.
Q 12Who raises Aloy as a fellow outcast?
Rost
He sacrifices himself to save her from the cult leader Helis after the Proving.
Q 13What is the tournament Aloy trains for years to win called?
The Proving
Winning would force the matriarchs to reveal her past — but masked cultists attack the moment she does.
Q 14What does Aloy wear to scan machines for weak points and loot?
Q 21What are the giraffe-like machines that reveal the map called?
Tallnecks
Scaling and overriding one is the game's version of the Ubisoft radio tower.
Q 22Which T. rex-like machine was the project's earliest proof of concept?
The Thunderjaw
It took 18 months to get from first sketch to a working in-game creature.
Q 23Which real animal inspired the Stalker machines?
Maned wolves
Longlegs came from terror birds and Watchers from meerkats and small bipedal dinosaurs.
Q 24Which author's books Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse shaped the world-building?
A Focus
The small earpiece is an augmented-reality device she found as a child.
Q 15What is the name of the cultist splinter faction hunting Aloy?
The Eclipse
They are secretly controlled by HADES, and Sylens admits he founded them.
Q 16Which ancient scientist does Aloy resemble?
Elisabet Sobeck
She led Project Zero Dawn, and Aloy is revealed to be her clone.
Q 17What is the name of the AI that controlled the Zero Dawn terraforming system?
GAIA
She reseeded life from stored DNA and built her own animal-like machines to restore the biosphere.
Q 18Which subsystem, built to enact a controlled extinction, secretly runs the cultists?
HADES
Aloy ends the war by stabbing it with the master override; Sylens captures its fleeing entity after the credits.
Q 19Who is the secretive figure who guides Aloy, then admits founding the cult?
Sylens
He was tempted by HADES's promises of knowledge and wants to interrogate it about the mystery signal.
Q 20Which city does Aloy defend from the cultists' siege in the finale?
Meridian
She kills Helis there and fights off corrupted machines before stabbing HADES with the override.
Jared Diamond
The team also worked with anthropologists on how tribal cultures form.
Q 25Which two Miyazaki films were early touchstones for the setting and story?
Nausicaä and Princess Mononoke
Writers also drew on Ellen Ripley, Sarah Connor and Mononoke's San for Aloy.
Q 26Who was the game director who called the pitch 'the most risky'?
Mathijs de Jonge
Art director Jan-Bart van Beek made the pitch; co-founder Hermen Hulst wanted to escape Killzone's grit.
Q 27Which 2010 game briefly paused development because of its similar red-headed hero?
Enslaved: Odyssey to the West
The team prototyped something else for six months before re-pitching to Sony.
Q 28What was the game's estimated budget?
Over €45 million
About 270 in-house staff worked with 18 outsourcing companies worldwide.
Q 29Which Singapore-based outsourcer dedicated 65 staff to machines and bandit camps?
Virtuos
Virtuos also led the 2020 PC port, with Nixxes helping.
Q 30Aloy was originally designed to use what kind of weapon?
A rifle
High-tech gunfire felt conceptually wrong for the setting, so the team switched to tribal weapons.