How a One-Week Pandemic Quiz Game Scaled to 60× Users with Tencent Cloud

Overview

This case study describes the "Fight Epidemic" (一起战疫) quiz mini‑game that was conceived, developed, and launched within one week. In the first four hours after release the user count surged 60 times, earning a recommendation from Xinhua News Agency. The project was built by two front‑end developers, one artist, and one planner.

Why the Game Was Created

At the start of the COVID‑19 outbreak, the team, as game professionals, noticed a strong demand for concise, reliable epidemic prevention information, medical science popularization, and related regulations. Traditional channels (TV, social posts, community boards) were fragmented and awkward to share. The team decided to use an engaging mini‑game on WeChat to deliver key knowledge quickly and entertainingly.

Challenges

Urgent timeline: the pandemic required the game to go live as early as possible, leaving little room for a long development cycle.

Multiplayer functionality demanded high backend capability, which small mini‑game teams often lack.

Rich audio‑visual presentation required copyrighted background music and sound effects.

Solutions

MGOBE Multiplayer Engine

Tencent Cloud’s MGOBE provides a client SDK and server framework for room management, matchmaking, frame sync, and state sync. By integrating MGOBE, the game quickly gained high‑performance online capabilities without building its own backend infrastructure.

CloudBase Serverless Backend

Using CloudBase’s serverless architecture eliminated the need for manual server setup and operation. CloudBase offers static hosting, CLI tools, and Flutter SDK support, lowering the barrier for multi‑platform development. It also provides authentication and database APIs that can be called directly from the client SDK or from cloud functions.

AME Music Service

The AME (Audio Music Engine) product offers a licensed music library specifically for game scenarios. Three tracks were selected, configured in the AME console, and accessed via a simple three‑step API call, ensuring smooth playback without copyright concerns.

Implementation Details

Room Management

Through MGOBE’s client SDK, the game implements creating, joining, exiting, dissolving, and querying rooms for two‑player quiz battles.

Online Matching

MGOBE allows custom matching rule sets defined via scripts in the console. The game uses interval‑based and tolerance matching, and when player density is low, robot matching automatically fills slots.

Real‑time Communication

Players’ answers and scores are synchronized using MGOBE’s message sending, frame sync, and server‑side message forwarding capabilities.

Server Logic

The server processes win/loss determination, updates player data, and handles result rollback. MGOBE’s real‑time server framework hosts robot logic, calls cloud functions for the question bank, and reads/writes player records in CloudBase’s database.

Data Read/Write

Frequent data operations—updating user scores, calculating leaderboards, fetching questions and answers—are performed via CloudBase’s database APIs, accessible from both client SDK and server‑side cloud functions.

Background Music

Three licensed tracks from the AME library are configured in the console and played via a simple API call, eliminating the need for manual copyright clearance and CDN distribution.

Conclusion

Rapidly responding to market trends is crucial for mini‑games. By leveraging Tencent Cloud’s solutions, the "Fight Epidemic" game was delivered in just one week with a small team, handling high concurrency, providing a rich interactive experience, and effectively disseminating up‑to‑date epidemic prevention knowledge.