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How to Run a Recurring Game Challenge Competition

Create a daily, weekly, or monthly game challenge — players compete on a fresh leaderboard every cycle with Speed Math, Word Battle, Reaction Speed, and more.

6 min read

Overview

A game challenge is a recurring competition built around one of BanglaTech's mini-games. The key difference from regular competitions: the leaderboard resets automatically at the end of every cycle (daily, weekly, or monthly), giving everyone a fresh chance to top the board.

This tutorial walks through creating a daily Speed Math challenge where students answer rapid-fire arithmetic questions in 60 seconds, and the highest score of the day wins.

Supported games:

Speed Math, Word Battle, Reaction Speed, Pattern Recognition, Memory Rain, Code Output Guess. Each game has its own scoring logic, but all of them feed a unified competition leaderboard.

Part 1 — Browse and Open Admin Panel

Any user can visit /competitions to see all live competitions and challenges side by side.

Public competitions list

As an admin, go to /admin/competitions to manage your hosted competitions.

Admin competitions list

Part 2 — Create the Challenge

Click New Competition and in the form, switch the Type to Game. This unlocks the game-specific fields:

Empty challenge form
  • Linked Game Type — pick one of the 6 games (we chose Speed Math)
  • Game Duration — how many seconds each attempt lasts (60s is standard)
  • Is Challenge — toggle ON to make it recurring
  • Challenge Frequency — daily / weekly / monthly (we chose daily)
  • Title + Organization + Description — same fields as any competition
Challenge form filled
Challenges skip date fields:

Unlike regular competitions, challenges don't need registration start/end or end date — they run continuously. The system auto-computes the current cycle (today's YYYY-MM-DD for daily, current ISO week for weekly, current month for monthly) and uses it to group scores.

Part 3 — Admin Detail Page

After creating, the admin panel shows the challenge with its current cycle, linked game, and participant stats.

Admin challenge detail

Part 4 — Student: Browse, Join, Play

A student browses /competitions and sees the challenge in the list. The Game type is shown with a gamepad icon.

Student browse competitions

Opens the challenge detail page, which shows the description and a Join button.

Student challenge detail

After joining, a green "Play Now" button appears — clicking it launches the linked game.

Student joined challenge

The Game Page

The game page loads with the duration set by the competition (60 seconds here). The student clicks Start Game to begin.

Speed Math game page

During the game, the student answers MCQ arithmetic questions as fast as they can. Wrong answers have a small penalty. When the timer hits zero, the game auto-submits the final score to the competition.

Part 5 — Leaderboard Updates Live

After Rahat finishes with a score of 185, the "Game Complete!" banner shows on the competition page and his entry appears at the top of the leaderboard.

Rahat finished the challenge Leaderboard after Rahat

When Sumaiya plays and scores 110, both participants are ranked on the daily leaderboard.

Final daily leaderboard

Part 6 — Admin: View All Participants

The admin panel shows both participants with their scores and play times for today's cycle.

Admin challenge with results Admin challenge participants

Tomorrow: A Fresh Leaderboard

When the clock rolls past midnight (for a daily challenge), the leaderboard resets automatically. Today's top players keep their "streak" history but start from zero on the new board. This keeps the challenge fresh and gives every participant a shot at #1 every day.

Weekly and Monthly cycles work the same way:

Just change the Challenge Frequency field when creating. Weekly challenges reset every Monday, monthly challenges reset on the 1st of each month. All previous cycles are preserved in the database for historical reference.

Summary

  • ✅ 6 games to choose from — picks that fit both reflexes (Reaction) and thinking (Code Output)
  • ✅ 3 frequencies: daily / weekly / monthly
  • ✅ Fresh leaderboard every cycle keeps engagement high
  • ✅ Same join + leaderboard flow as quiz competitions — easy for users who already know one system
  • ✅ No judging, no scoring by hand — everything is automatic based on game performance

For one-shot quiz competitions (not recurring), see the Quiz Competition tutorial. For writing contests with human judges, see the upcoming Story Competition tutorial.