Horizon Zero Dawn
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49 free Horizon Zero Dawn trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 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 49 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 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which studio developed Horizon Zero Dawn?
Guerrilla Games
Guerrilla Games: after years of grim war shooters the studio wanted a break from doom and gloom, and backed the pitch its own director called the riskiest on the table.
Q 02Where does Aloy save her progress in Horizon Zero Dawn?
At campfires
At campfires: every one she discovers also becomes a point she can fast-travel to, so the map gets quicker to cross the more of it she explores.
Q 03Which console launched days after Horizon Zero Dawn?
Nintendo Switch
Nintendo Switch: it arrived with a new Zelda, yet Horizon Zero Dawn kept that game off the top of the UK sales chart that week.
Q 04Horizon Zero Dawn was its studio's first new franchise since which series began in 2004?
Killzone
Killzone: only a small prototype team worked on the new idea at first, and the rest of the studio joined once the last big Killzone game shipped in 2013.
Q 05Horizon Zero Dawn runs on which game engine, first built for a 2013 shooter?
Decima
Decima: Hideo Kojima later chose the same engine for Death Stranding, and it only received its public name when that deal was announced in 2016.
Q 06Who voices Aloy in Horizon Zero Dawn?
Ashly Burch
Ashly Burch: the voice is hers, but the face is not, because Aloy's looks are modelled on another actress, Hannah Hoekstra.
Q 07Which star of The Wire voices a major character in Horizon Zero Dawn?
Lance Reddick
Lance Reddick: he returned for the sequel, and after his death in 2023 the part was recast, with Tim Russ taking it over for a 2024 spin-off.
Q 08Who was the lead composer of Horizon Zero Dawn?
Joris de Man
Joris de Man: he wrote the recurring themes, including Aloy's, while the other composers took on the soundscapes, the percussion and the tribal songs.
Q 09What do Horizon Zero Dawn's tribes call the lost civilisation before them?
Old Ones
The Old Ones: the tribes know little more about them because the archive meant to teach new humans their history was deliberately wiped before they were born.
Q 10In Horizon Zero Dawn, what name is given to the machines' growing aggression toward humans?
The Derangement
The Derangement: machines that used to shy away from people grew steadily more hostile, and new kinds built purely for fighting began to appear.
Q 11Which matriarchal tribe casts Aloy out at birth in Horizon Zero Dawn?
The Nora
The Nora: their matriarchs found her as a newborn inside the tribe's sacred mountain with no mother in sight, and that mystery was enough to have her cast out.
Q 12Who raises Aloy as a fellow outcast in Horizon Zero Dawn?
Rost
Rost: he spends years training her to survive alone in the wilds, then gives his own life to save hers when a cult leader comes to kill her.
Q 13In Horizon Zero Dawn, which tournament does Aloy spend years training to win?
The Proving
The Proving: winning would force the matriarchs to reveal where she came from, but masked killers attack the contest moments after she takes first place.
Q 21In Horizon Zero Dawn, which machines must Aloy climb to reveal the map?
Tallnecks
Tallnecks: they never attack and cannot be damaged, so the challenge is climbing one as it walks while more dangerous machines patrol the ground below.
Q 22Which T. rex-like machine was Horizon Zero Dawn's earliest proof of concept?
The Thunderjaw
The Thunderjaw: it was the first machine the team built, on the reasoning that if a robot this huge could work, the whole game could.
Q 23In Horizon Zero Dawn, what are the underground factories that build the machines called?
Cauldrons
Cauldrons: fighting through one teaches Aloy to override more kinds of machine, so each dungeon she clears adds new creatures she can turn to her side.
Q 14In Horizon Zero Dawn, what does Aloy wear to scan machines for weak points?
A Focus
A Focus: Aloy finds the tiny old-world earpiece as a child, and its augmented-reality display lets her see things nobody else in her tribe can.
Q 15Which masked cult hunts Aloy in Horizon Zero Dawn?
The Eclipse
The Eclipse: its soldiers take orders from a voice they believe is a devil from their own religion, and reawaken the old world's war machines on its behalf.
Q 16In Horizon Zero Dawn, Aloy is hunted because she looks like which ancient scientist?
Elisabet Sobeck
Elisabet Sobeck: the likeness is no accident, because Aloy is a clone of the woman who led the project that brought life back to a dead Earth.
Q 17Which AI ran the terraforming system at the heart of Project Zero Dawn?
GAIA
GAIA: once the old war machines had stripped the planet bare, she shut them down, built animal-like machines of her own to heal it, then reseeded life from stored DNA.
Q 18In Horizon Zero Dawn, which subsystem of the terraforming AI secretly controls the cult?
HADES
HADES: it was built only as a reset button, to wipe out a failed biosphere so the work could start again, until a signal from outside turned it rogue.
Q 19In Horizon Zero Dawn, which secretive guide admits he founded the cult hunting Aloy?
Sylens
Sylens: he helps Aloy win, then after the credits he is shown trapping the defeated AI for himself so he can question it about who woke it.
Q 20Which city does Aloy defend from the cult's siege at the end of Horizon Zero Dawn?
Meridian
Meridian: the attackers want the Spire, an ancient broadcast tower beside the city, to send the signal that would wake the old world's buried war machines.
Q 24Which author's studies of how human societies develop shaped the world-building of Horizon Zero Dawn?
Jared Diamond
Jared Diamond: so many of the team read his Guns, Germs, and Steel that the lead writer doubted any game studio had ever studied one book so closely.
Q 25Which two Miyazaki films were early touchstones for Horizon Zero Dawn's setting and story?
Nausicaä and Princess Mononoke
Nausicaä and Princess Mononoke: the lead writer named their heroines as influences on Aloy alongside Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor, yet insisted she had no one-for-one model.
Q 26In Horizon Zero Dawn, whose company built the war machines that destroyed the old world?
Ted Faro
Ted Faro: his combat robots could copy themselves and fuel up on living matter, so once he lost control of them they stripped the planet of life.
Q 27Which 2010 game's similar red-haired heroine briefly put Horizon Zero Dawn on hold?
Enslaved: Odyssey to the West
Enslaved: Odyssey to the West: the studio went back to pitching other ideas, until co-founder Hermen Hulst urged everyone to return to the robot-dinosaur concept.
Q 28Horizon Zero Dawn was developed in which European capital?
Amsterdam
Amsterdam: the team briefly discussed setting the game at home in the Netherlands, then chose North America for its varied landscapes and recognisable landmarks.
Q 29Which toy brand retold Horizon Zero Dawn's story as a family-friendly game in 2024?
Lego
Lego: the spin-off plays the end of the world for laughs, and unlike the solo first game it lets two people play through the story together.
Q 30Which Horizon Zero Dawn weapon harpoons machines to the ground?
Ropecaster
Ropecaster: enough anchored lines will pin even a huge machine in place for a while, which buys Aloy time to aim at its weak points.