Candy Merge

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  Game UI

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  Game Thumbnail

Inspiration

I wanted to try something different than what I usually do (which is 2D physics platformer,) and wanted to see if AI could help me with graphics. I also had the Poki audence in mind, a young generation of players, so I had to come up with something that's easy to play, and cute for all ages. That's when I thought of managing my own candy shop.

What it does

Candy Merge is a playable Reddit app for communities that want a light social game inside a post. One person opens the Candy Merge post and runs their own candy shop by merging sweets in the game. Other Reddit users can visit that same post and request candy orders for the shop owner to make. The result is a shared loop where the post owner plays, commenters participate, and the post keeps generating interaction.

Important operational notes:

• The app creates a Candy Merge post when the app is installed.
• The owner of the post sees the game and plays it directly inside Reddit.
• Other users on that post do not play the owner’s board. They request candies from the owner, but can also continue playing their own Candy Merge game.
• A commenter can only have one active order at a time on a given post.
• Available order choices depend on what the post owner has already unlocked in their game.
• The app stores player progress, pending orders, and leaderboard totals so the game can continue across sessions.
• Players can opt in to app notifications from the in-game settings when supported.

What People Can Do

• Open the Candy Merge post and press the start button to launch the game.
• Merge candies to unlock more items and expand what visitors can request.
• See incoming community orders inside the game.
• Complete orders to reward commenters and keep the queue moving.

For commenters and visitors

• Open someone else’s Candy Merge post.
• Request a candy by tapping an item in the order screen.

Leaderboard

• The game stores the number of candies merged, representing the players' score.
• The top 20 users will be mentioned in a post when the weekly leaderboard resets (every Sunday 23:00 UTC).
• The score will be set to 0 every time the leaderboard resets.
• Players already playing the game when the leaderboard resets will get a realtime message, with a message saying their score has been reset

Rewards for commenters

• When a post owner completes your candy order, you receive either coins or gems.
• Flair upgrades. Your subreddit flair is updated automatically each time one of your orders is completed. The icon and background color reflect your all-time gem total, so ordering higher-level candies (which have a better chance of paying gems) is the fastest way to climb.
• The flair text also shows your running gem and coin totals (e.g. 🍬 💎342 🪙1.2K), so other community members can see how active you are.

Push notifications

• Candy Merge sends push notifications to help players stay engaged (max 2 per use per day):
• Streak reminders — when a player has an active streak and hasn't opened the game yet that day, the app sends a reminder so they don't lose their progress.
• Daily quests — when new daily quests become available, the app notifies players so they can jump in and complete them.
• Pending orders — post owners are notified when they have orders in their queue waiting to be completed. Players can opt in to notifications from the in-game settings menu. opt-out is the default.

How we built it

Built entirely with Phaser. Some graphics are made by AI, and some are hand-made.

Challenges we ran into

I have never been an active user of Reddit before, and didn't know anything about Devvit games. I spent a lot of time understanding concepts and experimenting with what we can do. Combining the "server" with the "client" was a difficult aspect of the project.

Another challenging part is to make the game compliant with all the rules/requirements for launching a game. The rules leaves some interpretation, and the feedback from mod-mails could have been more informative. If they reject a game, they can also explain where the rules are violated instead of just writing that we need to follow the rules "on these points". The Discord channel was helpful to get some more clarification.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I focused a lot on "juice" for the game, and trying to make it as addictive as possible for the first couple of minutes. I feel the game plays well and is satisfying right from the start.

I'm also proud to have been able to integrate the game with Reddit's APIs. It's cool to see players connecting to the game from the comment section.

What we learned

Focus on simple game loops that keeps the player hooked is extremely powerful. We need to keep the player interested the first 10 seconds, then the next 10 seconds, and so on an so forth. If they drop out the first minute of gameplay they won't be able to experience all the hard work put into the game, so we need to focus on good onboarding, and techniques to keep the player in the game, and coming back for more.

What's next for Candy Merge

I will try to publish the game on Crazy Games and Poki as well. I'll also take feedback from the community to see where I can improve the game. I think there's more in the Devvit eco-system I can use for the game to make it more fun and keep player invested in it.

Built With

• devvit
• phaser.js