Critical Mass: The Ultimate AI Bot-Making Competition
Hosted on UnstopFetched about 3 hours ago
Thursday, March 19, 2026
to Saturday, March 28, 2026
•
1 week long
Artificial IntelligenceMachine LearningPythonGame DevelopmentStudent
Student only
This hackathons is only open to students. Double check the event page for more information as this may mean only those from a particular university/country are eligible.
Event Type
online
82
Participants
₹10,000
Prize Pool
7
Est. Projects
Organizers
CRITICAL MASS – AI Bot Competition:
Welcome to the ultimate test of algorithmic supremacy, CRITICAL MASS, a smart AI bot making competition organized by NJACK, IIT Patna this time under it's fest Apeiron.
In this competition, participants go head-to-head in the unpredictable game of Chain Reaction.
Your task is to write a Python script that controls a smart AI bot to play Chain Reaction on a 12 x 8 board.
The Red and Green players take turns placing orbs.
When a cell reaches its critical mass, it explodes, claiming adjacent cells and triggering exponential chain reactions.
The winner is the one who eliminates all of the other player's orbs.
Are you ready to engineer a bot that doesn't just play the game, but orchestrates total board annihilation?
Eligibility & Team Rules:
Team Size: This competition is open to teams of 1 to 2 members.
Participants must be currently pursuing a B.Tech or B.E degree from any institute.
A team may have participants from different institutes.
Each team is allowed to submit only one bot.
Event Stages and Timeline:
Registration & Submission Deadline: 28th March, 2026 before 12:00 p.m.
Evaluation Criteria:
Phase 1: Double Round-Robin Preliminaries:
To ensure absolute fairness and neutralize the first-player advantage, all bots will compete in a round-robin tournament.
Every bot will face every opposing bot exactly twice - once as the first player, and once as the second player.
Scoring:
Win = 1 point
Draw = 0.5 points
Loss = 0 points
Phase 2: The Semi-Finals:
The top 4 teams with the highest total tournament points will advance to a single-elimination bracket.
Seeding:
Seed #1 vs. Seed #4
Seed #2 vs. Seed #3
Phase 3: The Grand Finale:
The two surviving bots from the semi-finals will go head-to-head in a two-legged grand finale to crown the champion.
Tie-Breakers:
Sudden-death head-to-head match.
If still tied, the judging committee will review the underlying code.
The bot utilizing the most optimized, dynamic algorithmic logic will be declared the winner.
Elegant, adaptable algorithms will be strictly prioritized over heavily hard-coded heuristic approaches.
Winning Criteria:
A bot can win in the following ways:
If it causes a chain reaction that completely eliminates all opponent orbs from the board.
If its opponent makes an invalid move or takes more than 1 second to respond.
Technical Guidelines & Submission Rules:
Submissions must be made in Python only.
Each bot is allotted a maximum processing time of 1 second per move.
Failing to return a valid output in time results in an automatic loss.
Allowed Libraries: NumPy, Pandas, PyTorch, and TensorFlow.
Restrictions:
The use of additional threads is strictly not allowed.
Forfeiting a turn is not allowed.
What to Submit:
A single Python script named teamname_bot.py.
A text file or PDF containing a brief description explaining your bot's strategy.
Note:
Official rulebook and contest resources will be shared after registration.