Reddit x Bubbits - Puzzle Challenge

Reddit x Bubbits - Blocks Post Design
Reddit x Bubbits - WebView Gameplay

Inspiration

I was inspired by my friend Heideltraut, creator of Riddonkulous and the chance to show off Bubbits in a fashion that can only exist on Reddit!

What it does

Bubbits brings bite sized but high quality Bubble Shooter Puzzle Challenges straight onto Reddit. Each day, new Challenge Posts are created with help of a Scheduler. They can either be randomly generated or prebuilt! Before heading in, you pick which Subreddit you would like to support and depending on how well you do, you earn points for your Subreddit on the Global Subreddit Leaderboards. Each Post can have 1 of 3 Puzzle Modes: Time Trial, Limited Shots or Highscore. Highscore has the longest playtime and is worth more points!

How I built it

In 2 Parts:

A Bubbits styled Devvit Blocks Post to welcome the players and show the Realtime Subreddit Leaderboard
A lightweight WebView version of Bubbits

Bubbits itself is a huge Phaser Project including multiple Modes, a 25 Player Battle Royale Multiplayer and lots of player customization. To truly shine on Reddit though, most of what Bubbits normally does when launching has been altered and adjusted to tailor it well to a quick in, quick out Puzzle Challenge experience. The normal asset size is around 300MB, for Reddit I have brought that asset size down almost 90% to ensure a quick load while also keeping the visual quality Bubbits is known for.

Challenges I ran into

Getting the User Flow between Blocks Post and WebView just right and presenting up to date data in the Blocks post have been the biggest technical challenges. From a non technical perspective, trying to establish an idea of how a Reddit Metagame that is directly tying into the gameplay could work was absolutely not trivial either.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

The seamless user flow in and out of the Webview and the self correcting Reddit x Bubbits Subreddit War Metagame. The way how Subreddit point distribution for completing a level works is two fold:

If you play a Challenge for the first time, your victory is worth more points
If you beat the average performance of all other players in that challenge, you also get more points This way the Challenges tied to each post are self correcting their point payouts by keeping track of how all the players are doing on average in each challenge and no matter when you play, it is a challenge to beat the average to earn more points. This way, players are encouraged to play as good as they can and also incentivize playing new posts instead of simply grinding older posts while also allowing players to play as much as they like.

What I learned

Getting involved into a new ecosystem is always both, very interesting, but also very challenging. What I have learned and appreciated a lot is the superb Devvit community that has formed in the Devvit Discord. I have loved the Office Hours Chats and it felt great to not just build something on my own, but as a part of the Devvit Developer Community.