The Summoning

Eldritch Ritual Game for Reddit

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The Summoning: Eldritch Ritual Game for Reddit

Bolt x Devvit Hackathon: Silly Sh!t Challenge Entry

Built on Bolt

🏆 Submission Details

🚀 Overview

The Summoning is a gloriously silly, collaborative ritual game for Reddit, built with Bolt.new and Devvit.
Inspired by r/place and the wildest corners of Reddit, this app lets users join forces (or sabotage each other) to summon the Eldritch Entity through a series of ridiculous, magical actions.
It’s a game that serves no real purpose—except maximum joy, chaos, and upvotes.

🎮 How It Works

  • Join the Ritual: Visit the ritual post in your subreddit and become a cultist.
  • Summoning Actions: Users can light candles, offer karma, chant, or draw sigils to strengthen the summoning
  • Perform Actions: Click buttons or comment with spells to add or drain energy.
  • Protective Measures: Salt circles and incense can weaken the summoning
  • Progress the Ritual: Watch as the energy bar fills, special events trigger, and the Eldritch Entity draws closer to awakening.
  • Sabotage or Support: Work together, or against each other, to control the fate of the ritual.
  • Comment Spells: Special phrases in comments add extra power
  • Counter-Spells: Protective phrases can disrupt active magic
  • Unleash the Weird: When the ritual completes, a random curse is unleashed on the subreddit!
  • User Roles: Each participant gets a mystical role that affects their actions
  • Grimoire Entries: Each summoning adds lore to the collective grimoire

🦑 Features

Ritual Progression

  • Multiple ritual states: Dormant → Awakening → Active → Climax → Summoned.
  • Energy bar visualizes progress, with color and glow effects.
  • Special events and curses trigger at key milestones.

Ritual Actions

  • Strengthen the Ritual:
    • Light Candle (🕯️): +8 energy
    • Offer Karma (⬆️): +12 energy
    • Chant (🗣️): +10 energy
    • Draw Sigil (🔮): +15 energy
    • Spell Comment: +20 energy (by commenting special spells/emojis)
  • Weaken the Ritual:
    • Toss Salt (🧂): -10 energy
    • Burn Incense (🔥): -8 energy

Multiplayer & Community

  • Tracks all participants (“cultists”) and their actions.
  • Shows live counts for all ritual actions.
  • Displays last action and number of participants.

Visuals & Feedback

  • Animated, atmospheric UI with glowing energy bar.
  • Special event modals and emoji effects.
  • Status messages for energy, errors, and instructions.

Reddit Integration

  • Built for subreddits using Devvit triggers and Reddit’s Redis for state.
  • All actions are available via UI or Reddit comments.

Theming & Responsiveness

  • Dark, spooky, and fun design.
  • Fully responsive for desktop and mobile.

Note to Judges:

  • Debug features are still enabled for your enjoyment to play around with!
  • Make sure you try out the comment system! 🌀 See the pinned post on the sub.
  • The initial launch version will have debug removed and allow the app moderator to set a custom "summon limit" for how many summoning points the community needs to achieve to complete the summoning. This will allow the game to be as short or as long as the community decides! A summoning could take days or weeks!

🛠️ Tech Stack

  • Frontend: React (TypeScript), Tailwind CSS
  • Backend: Devvit (Reddit’s developer platform), Bolt.new
  • State: Reddit Redis
  • Deployment: Bolt.new, ready for any public subreddit

🤪 Why So Silly?

This project was built for the Silly Sh!t Challenge in the Bolt x Devvit Hackathon.
It’s intentionally weird, whimsical, and gloriously impractical—designed to bring Redditors together for a communal, over-the-top experience that’s all about fun.

⚡ Built With

💡 Inspiration

Inspired by Reddit’s love for communal chaos (r/place, million checkboxes), and the joy of doing something gloriously pointless together.

📣 Support & Feedback

  • Post issues or ideas in the demo subreddit!

🙏 Credits

  • zombizzle (Reddit: u/zombizzle)
  • Reddit Devvit & Bolt teams
  • All the cultists who joined the ritual!

🚨 Disclaimer

This app is for entertainment only. No actual eldritch beings will be summoned (probably).

🔮 What’s Next?

The veil between Reddit and the eldritch beyond is thin—and we’re just getting started. Here’s what we’re conjuring up for future updates:

  • Blood Moon Events: Time-limited global modifiers that supercharge or sabotage summoning efforts.
  • Ritual Components Crafting: Collect and combine weird ingredients (e.g., frog tongues, haunted memes, expired awards) to amplify effects.
  • Weather Effects: Randomly generated conditions like "Cursed Fog" or "Rain of Frogs" that impact gameplay.
  • XP & Levels: Cultists earn XP from actions, unlocking new titles (e.g., “Junior Hexer” → “Sigil Scribe” → “Acolyte of the Infinite Screech”).
  • Custom Avatars/Sigil Badges: Show off your dark devotion with cosmetic flairs or unique profile glyphs.
  • Personal Grimoires: Track your own ritual history, spells cast, and curses unleashed.
  • Chain Reactions: Certain combos (e.g., 3 chants + 1 sigil + 1 upvote) cause surprise effects.
  • Random Curses: Failed rituals can backfire with absurd subreddit-wide consequences (e.g., reversed text, only goat emojis allowed for 24 hours).
  • Possession Events: Occasionally, a user may become “possessed,” causing their actions to be randomized and 2x as powerful or cursed.
  • Living Grimoire: Every ritual permanently alters the shared lore. Add chapters to the cult’s history with each summoning.
  • NPC Interactions: Mysterious Reddit-based entities (The Archivist, The Screamer, The Janitor of the Void) may appear to offer quests or chaos.
  • Easter Eggs: Hidden incantations and rare interactions with deep Reddit references.
  • Award-Based Triggers: Specific Reddit awards cause special effects (e.g., Wholesome award summons a Friendly Ghost).
  • Subreddit-Themed Entities: Customize your Eldritch Entity per subreddit, based on its vibes or memes.
  • Summon Wars: Compete or ally with other subreddits in cross-community rituals.

* Reality Tears: Occasionally, the UI glitches in bizarre ways as the Entity grows in power (on purpose, we swear).

Want a say in the next ritual feature? Drop your cursed ideas in r/TheSummoningGame and let the madness spread.

Absolutely! Here's a Challenge Requirements section tailored for the Bolt.new Silly Sh!t Hackathon, mapping your project features directly to the challenge goals in a fun but clear format:

✅ Challenge Requirements Met

Here’s how The Summoning delivers on the glorious nonsense expected from the Bolt x Devvit "Silly Sh!t" Challenge:

💩 Silly Sh!t Theme

  • Core Premise Is Absurd: You're literally summoning a fake Eldritch Entity via upvotes, emojis, and Reddit comments.
  • Zero Real Utility: It has no purpose other than chaotic joy and Reddit-based tomfoolery.
  • Built for LOLs: Every mechanic is built around being intentionally weird, spooky, and communal in the silliest way possible.

🤝 Community Collaboration

  • Multiplayer Gameplay: Users must work together—or sabotage each other—to progress or derail the ritual.
  • Shared Goal: Summon the entity... or don't. Either way, you're in it together.
  • Subreddit-Scale Events: Rituals and curses affect the entire subreddit as a group.

🔧 Built with Bolt.new

  • Fully implemented using Bolt.new and Devvit for Reddit-native functionality.
  • Public project shared here: View Bolt Project
  • Bolt.new Badge + Hyperlink clearly visible on project!

🐙 Weird / Useless / Fun

  • Over-the-top lore for meaningless actions (e.g., tossing salt or offering karma).
  • Surreal rituals that unleash random "curses" with no real-world consequences.
  • Silly magic system using comment spells, emojis, and user roles.

📱 Interactive & Engaging

  • Live-updating ritual energy bar and user actions.
  • Comment-based spell system encourages engagement and meme-creation.
  • Visuals, emojis, and random events keep users surprised and entertained.

🖥️ Integrated with Reddit

  • Uses Reddit Redis for state, Devvit for triggers, and works directly in a subreddit post.
  • Accessible via both the UI and Reddit comments (for max meme-ability).

🎨 Creative Use of Devvit

  • Dynamic energy bar, comment parsing, and UI elements powered by Devvit.
  • Real-time feedback loop between actions, state changes, and visuals.

🏅 Prizes & Eligibility

🏷️ Category & ✅ How We Qualify

  • Useless Sh!t Challenge - Entirely impractical and gloriously silly. You summon a fake cosmic horror using upvotes, salt, and emojis.
  • Global Hackathon - Fully built on Bolt.new + Devvit, deployable to any public subreddit.
  • Regional Highlights | AMER - Project created by a U.S.-based dev (u/zombizzle) and eligible for regional highlight consideration.
  • Bonus Prize | Creative Use of AI - Can integrate generative AI for lore, possessed bot messages, dynamic curses, or hallucinated prophecies. (Potential extension.) Practically everthing in this was hallucinated by AI, I only provided the core ideas and theming.
  • Bonus Prize | Most Viral Project - Designed for Reddit virality: comment spells, chaos-driven gameplay, meme-worthy rituals, and community sabotage.
  • Bonus Prize | Future Unicorn - Scalable ritual engine with potential for expansion across subreddits, seasonal events, and monetizable mechanics.
  • We Didn’t Know We Needed This - It's Reddit summoning an imaginary entity for no reason... and people love it. Truly the cursed innovation we never asked for.

Built With

  • bolt.new
  • devvit
  • react
  • tailwindcss
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