Tournaments, esports and wikis

Who is the best pilot?

Hyper Shards players post their high scores on Discord every day. Then @shardqueen writes: "We should have a proper tournament!" Others start a shared document listing the best ship for each wave.

That's a healthy community: players want to compete, and to teach each other. This lesson covers small tournaments, why big esports are rare for small games, and how to support the fans who build wikis and race through our games.

Three tournament formats

• Score attackEveryone plays during a time window, like one weekend. Best score wins. It fits Hyper Shards, which already has a leaderboard.
• Weekly seedEveryone gets the same seed, the number that decides where aliens appear, so everyone faces the same waves. Slay the Spire's Daily Climb gives all players one shared seed each day.
• BracketHead-to-head matches, like two pilots on the same seed. In single elimination one loss knocks you out: 8 players need 3 rounds and 7 matches. In double elimination you are out after two losses.

Fair rules, written first

Publish the rules before the tournament starts, and don't change them halfway. Good rules say:

• When it runs, in UTC, the world's reference clock, so every time zone agrees.
• Which version and mode count, and how many attempts.
• What proof is needed, and what happens with a tie.
• Who judges, and how to appeal.

Then check the results. The golden rule from Stopping cheaters (Stage 4) is never trust the client. Hyper Shards records every input with the seed, so our server can replay a run and confirm the score is real.

Prizes and the law

Many of our players are 10 to 12, so prizes stay age-appropriate: a ship skin, a special title, or the winner's player name on a Hall of Fame screen. No cash.

Prizes also bring in the law. In many countries, a contest where people pay to enter and winners are picked by chance counts as a lottery, which is tightly regulated. Contests of real skill, and free prize draws, have their own rules, which differ between countries and even between US states. So before any prize event, a parent checks the rules for where our players live.

What about esports?

Esports means organised competitive gaming: teams, leagues, commentators, and thousands of people watching online. It needs a lot to work: a huge player base so the top players are truly skilled, a game that is exciting to watch, constant balancing so no single strategy always wins, strong anti-cheat, and someone to pay for venues, staff and prize pools.

That's why esports usually grow around big games with big budgets. For a small studio, a friendly weekly cup on Discord fits much better, and still feels exciting to the people in it.

Wikis: fans write the manual

A wiki is a website its readers can edit. Fans love documenting games: every pest's speed, the best plant for wave 12, Sprig's secret hats. Most game wikis run on MediaWiki, the software behind Wikipedia, on hosts like Fandom, wiki.gg or Miraheze.

Give the community a start: a page of ship and pest stats from balance.json, art the wiki may use, and a link from our website. Every page keeps a history of who changed what, so we can thank top editors by community name in patch notes. Fandom accounts start at age 13, so a parent helps.

Speedrunners

• A built-in timerAccurate to the millisecond and shown on screen, so every runner times the same way.
• A seed optionLet runners pick the seed, so runs can be compared fairly.
• Skip optionsSkippable cutscenes and a quick restart button.

A speedrun is finishing a game as fast as possible. Runners compare times on sites like speedrun.com: they submit a video, and volunteer moderators check it before it joins the leaderboard. Each game has categories, like Any% (finish by any means) and 100% (collect everything). Charity marathons like Games Done Quick stream runs live. Summer Games Done Quick 2026 raised about 2.4 million dollars for Doctors Without Borders.

Bolt says: If runners find a clever shortcut, ask the community before you "fix" it. Next: achievements and rewards.