Campfire Climb: Daily Speedrun

Inspiration

I wanted to capture the flow state of speedrunners. That state where muscle memory takes over and you become one with the physics. I'm a huge fan of games like Getting Over it with Bennett Foddy. I was also inspired by the Daily Challenge aspect, and I looked at the daily ritual of games like Wordle and wanted to combine it with the punishing precision of a platformer like Celeste.

I wanted a game where "memorizing the level" only works for 24 hours. After that, the world changes, the physics shift, and the leaderboard resets.

What it does

Campfire Climb is a high-octane physics platformer where speed is everything. You play as a sentient marshmallow racing to ascend a radioactive world before time runs out.

The twist? The game changes every 24 hours. A new level seed, a new special ability, and a global physics modifier (like low gravity or super speed) ensure that no two days are ever the same. Players compete on a single global leaderboard to see who can master the day's unique chaos.

How we built it

I built this project as a solo developer who weaponized spec-driven development and every AI Coding Agent framework out there to ship as fast as possible.

I used PlayCanvas for the engine because its web-first nature allowed me to get it running on devvit, but it's a fully featured game engine that I was already very familiar with.

Challenges I ran into

• Balancing "Rage" vs. "Fun": Tuning the physics for the character controller feel took dozens of iterations. It needed to feel heavy enough to control, but bouncy enough to be chaotic. It's still not fully there! But what we have shipped is offers a high skill ceiling for players who learn to master inertia and the movement abilities.
• Porting PlayCanvas to Devvit: It took about a week of tinkering to get this to work, but it was so satisfying once I had the automation and workflow figured out to pull builds from PC, and push them live with the devvit CLI.
• Leaderboards and Databases: This was the first time I have ever used redis or had to roll my own leaderboard system! I lost a few days, but it was worth it. I drive not only scores, but also replays "ghost position" data through the system.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

• Functional Daily Mutation: We successfully implemented a system where the game state (level, abilities, physics) resets and regenerates every 24 hours based on a server-side seed.
• Ghost Replays: The best run players complete will save their replay, and they'll show up as a ghost for other players near them on the leaderboard. It's still a little unpolished, but I think it adds a ton to the approachability of the game, and giving you a benchmark to compete against!
• That "Just One More Try" Feeling: We landed an addictive mastery loop. The physics feel tight, and the desire to shave 0.5 seconds off your time is real.

What I learned

I've been using agentic tools to write code for a while, but the scope and ambition of Campfire meant I had to take that to the next level. By splitting the work across specialized agents, we built a complex system in a fraction of the time.

I also learned that marshmallows are surprisingly aerodynamic.

What's next for Campfire Climb: Daily Speedrun

• More Levels!!: I've shipped with 2, but want to add a new level each week.
• More Mutators: So many possibilities.
• Mobile Polish: Further refining the touch controls for competitive mobile play.

Built With

• firebase
• playcanvas
• redis
• typescript