Inspiration

Hackathons are how our group became a team. As members of Women in Tech at UAB, one of our goals is getting more students to join them. We know a first hackathon can feel intimidating: you don’t know what to build, who to team up with, or whether you’re “technical enough.” We built HackOrGoHome as a welcoming first step, where students can find hackathons, find teammates, and practice scoping, teamwork, and pitching through game-like quests. We want more students to find their team and have as much fun as we did.

What it does

HackOrGoHome is a game-like home for first-time hackers. Find a hackathon, find your people, and practice the skills that make your first event feel doable.

🔎 Hackathon catalogue

Browse hackathons in one place so you can find your next event without digging through a dozen sites.

🤝 Team finder

Match with students who are interested in the same hackathons you are, so you never have to show up without a team.

🎮 Quests

Quiz-style games that teach hackathon skills, with two ways to play:

Easy mode: ease in at your own pace and learn the basics.
Survival mode: crank up the challenge when you're ready.

Pick your quest:

⛏️ Build: project brainstorming quests that help you turn a vague idea into something you can actually make.
💥 Defeat the Creeper: pitching quests where you practice explaining your project clearly before time runs out.

[Quests are generated with Gemini from real award-winning Devpost projects.]

🔐 Secure login

Sign in with Auth0 to keep your profile and progress safe.

🏗️ For organizers

Launch your own hackathon website and customize it to fit your event, no design skills required.

🌍 Terrain

Every quest you complete adds something to your own world. Your terrain grows as your skills do, so your progress is something you can see, not just a score.

How we built it

Node.js and Express 5 with EJS pages, and the Google Gemini API (@google/genai) generating and judging rounds. Rounds are built from real winning projects in the Hugging Face dataset twangodev/devpost-hacks [from 2025 events: TreeHacks, PennApps, Cal Hacks, HackGT, MadHacks]. We use a small sampled file instead of the full dataset. Gemini returns structured JSON that the server validates before showing it. Player sucessful progress builds the terrain,

Challenges we ran into

Choosing which games we wanted to keep and which games we wanted to add later, and adding multiplayer games for team members to play together was a huge task we have to wait for!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

A working game loop on real hackathon data, designed around ideas from learning science: struggle before the answer, graded hints, specific feedback, and a chance to retry. Players can’t farm points, and the demo survives API failures.

What we learned

We learned that the science of learning is important for learning and engagement in students. Making hackathons fun and accessible is one of the things we wanted to do with this project

What's next for HackOrGoHome

Finish the teamwork and judge-panel quests, grow the terrain based on mastery instead of completions, store progress in a database, bring back missed scenarios later for spaced practice, and show upcoming hackathons with a team matcher for finding teammates.