In a calendar, participants open a new door each day or each week. Behind each door is a quiz question, and if the participant answers correctly, they are in the drawing for a prize.

You as the game designer decide how many doors there are and when they can be opened. Most commonly, there are 24 or 25 doors in an advent calendar, but you can use the calendar in many creative ways.

This section gives an overview of the calendar settings under Game Settings > General.

This controls whether the quiz question and answers are aligned in the left/right/center of the game addon.

This lets you simulate a date in the future using the Demo URL. This is how you can see what the calendar will look like when it is live. The test date can be enabled both in backend and in the frontend editor:

This feature is available for regular prizes only (not bulk prizes). If you have associated a prize with the field, information about the prize will be shown under the day's quiz question.

The calendar works by creating date-controlled fields, which are active only on the day or during the date range you define.

Under Game Settings > Fields, you will find a list of all of your calendar's dates. These fields are linked to the right day on your calendar graphic under Game Settings > Layout.

In the daily template, there are 24 fields, one for each day in December. The weekly template has 4 fields, each lasting one week.

Editing a field allows you to edit everything that is specific to that date in your calendar, including:

The default settings of a calendar include a quiz question (or multiple questions). When the participant opens the door, they will see that day's quiz. You will have the following options for editing the integrated quiz:

Instead of directing to a quiz question, you can set your field to instead go to a specific flow page. This could be if you are just using the calendar to give away prizes or share information.

When directing to a flow page from the game, you will likely want to have your registration page come before the game.

Our recommended flow is: Registration > Game > Winner page. You can activate autosubmit on your registration form if you don't want participants to see it every time they visit the campaign.

It is also possible to set up the flow of: Game > Registration > Winner page. In this instance, you may want to include a date control on your winner page so that you have a different page for each day or week of your calendar.

Another possible flow might be: Game > Winner page > Registration > Confirmation, if you want to show participants the possible prize before they register. But this flow is not likely to result in the highest conversion rate.

Another option for your field action is go to URL.

This option is most often used to direct to another Playable game, though you can also link to another page on your website.

There are some things you need to keep in mind if you choose this options:

*Based on browser cookies, the registration form in the 2nd game can remember the user's data if entered in the 1st game (the calendar). But this is only true if the registration form fields have the same names.

Also, make sure you are giving your participants the opportunity to accept your terms and conditions, if they vary from game to game!

In our Calendar design guide you will find our general recommendations for graphics sizing.

When building a desktop calendar, the game settings you choose will depend on the layout you choose. You have three different options for your calendar background and doors:

This is the option you will choose if you are creating your own door graphic. Depending on the design, we recommend that your graphic measures maximum 1000 x 600px, which works on both desktop and tablet.

This is the option you will choose for a graphic background that doesn't include any doors. You will define in the platform

You will upload a plain graphic background, again with a maximum size of 1000 x 600px.

This is the option you will choose for a full-screen background and auto-generated doors.

With this option, you will not upload any graphics under game settings. You will only define the placement of the auto-generated doors.

A full-screen background should be at least 1600 x 1000 px (maximum 2560 x 1600 px), though the exact dimensions depend on whether it should be on the game flow section or the entire landing page.

On mobile devices, only one calendar door is shown at a time*.

If you don't have a specific mobile design, you can use the platform's auto-generated doors on mobile, even if you are using a graphic on desktop.

This will generate a square door, 200x200px in size. If you enable extra theming, you can define the color, font, and border just like with auto-generated doors on desktop. In the image below you can see an example of an auto-generated door.

To use a graphic on mobile, you will upload the image of the door and only the door.

The entire mobile door is the active area, so you will not set an active area on the mobile graphic the way you do on the desktop graphic.

This also means that any background you want for your mobile calendar door will be uploaded under the Layout or Style tabs.

When designing your mobile door graphic, remember:

*If your fields are date-ranges (weekly calendar), you have the option to place each of the 4 weekly doors on mobile. But this only works with an uploaded graphic, not with auto-generated doors.

A single-door calendar shows only one door per day.

To build a single-door calendar, you need to upload your own door graphic. The platform's auto-generated door feature is not available with this calendar type. See this article for more information about the one-door calendar here.

You can find a shareable design guide here.

Want to try building a calendar but don't have any graphics yet?

Download our graphics pack, with correctly sized assets for desktop and mobile!

Calendar graphics.zip

You can also download design templates to help you build your own calendar graphic.

Download the Adobe XD design template here.

Download the Sketch design template here.

In a calendar game, you can use both bulk prizes and regular prizes. If you are in doubt about what prizes to use, you can use our guide to choose the right prize for your campaign.

If you are giving out regular prizes, and don't want to have to manually draw a winner for every prize in your advent calendar, you can program the system to select winners automatically. This is especially helpful if you are offering one or more prizes each day throughout the campaign. You can find the settings for automatic draw under Prizes > Draw settings.

Tip: If you are offering multiples of the same prize for each day, it's a good idea to set up your automatic prize drawing before duplicating the prize. That way, your prize-draw settings will be copied into the new prizes and you won't have to adjust them individually.

The prize add-on displays the prizes available in a campaign. This add-on works best in a calendar, where different prizes may be available on different days. By using the prize add-on, the prizes on display will automatically update.

The calendar game also allows you to display the prize directly under the quiz question. The right solution for your campaign will depend on what prizes you have and where you want to display them.

If the prizes in your advent calendar are donated or sponsored by another company or organization, you can show your appreciation and recognition using the sponsor add-on.

Each prize can have a sponsor associated with it, and you can display this information along with the prizes or separately in your campaign. The sponsor information can be added under the individual prize settings:

It's common to set up a pre-launch campaign for your calendar to collect permissions and build anticipation leading up to December 1. There are several ways to design a pre-launch campaign. You can read more about the options in this article.

You can add falling snowflakes to your holiday campaign.

Add the snow integration under Integrations > Misc. > Particle Generator.

When you configure the integration, you can adjust the appearance of the snow:

We hope that this article can serve as a good guide for getting started with the calendar. If you need further assistance, please reach out to our chat support!