How to Play Games in WhatsApp Groups
Set up trivia, hangman, word chain, and other games. Leaderboards and XP tracking.
BotWave's game system is built to keep community groups alive without admin effort: trivia auto-rotates categories, hangman picks new words from a daily pool, word-chain enforces a 5-second turn timer, and chess pairs players with persistent boards. Leaderboards roll up across all games into a single XP score per user.
Prerequisites
- BotWave bot in the group with the !play command enabled (on by default).
Step-by-step instructions
- 1
Start a game with !play
`!play trivia` for trivia, `!play hangman` for hangman, `!play wordchain` for word chain, `!play chess @user` for chess.
!play trivia - 2
Pick categories or difficulty
Trivia: `!play trivia --category=science --difficulty=hard`. Categories include science, history, sports, pop-culture, geography.
- 3
Enable daily auto-games
Dashboard → Games → Schedule → ON. The bot will start a fresh trivia game at the time you choose every day.
- 4
Check the leaderboard
Send !leaderboard to see top players for this group. !leaderboard global shows top players across all your groups.
!leaderboard - 5
Tune the rules
Dashboard → Games → Settings: trivia time-per-question (default 30s), hangman max-guesses (default 6), word-chain turn timer.
Expected result
Members can spin up games on demand, daily auto-games trigger engagement, and the leaderboard tracks who is winning.
Power-user tips
- Set up weekly leaderboard reset for fairness, new joiners stand a chance.
- Pair games with XP-based command unlocks (e.g. unlock !customcommand at 100 XP).
Frequently asked questions
Do games count against my message quota?
Each bot response counts as one message. A 10-question trivia game ≈ 20 bot messages.
Can I add custom trivia questions?
Yes via Dashboard → Games → Custom questions. Bulk-import CSV supported on Standard plan and up.
Ready to put this into practice?
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