Cannons and Castles

• 

  Cannons And Castles

What's next for Cannons and CastlesInspiration We love the tension of classic War Game: build quickly, pick firing lanes, then watch a battlefield change under cannon fire. Cannons and Castles translates that idea into a social Reddit game where every commander shares the same map and every turn resolves together.

What it does

Cannons and Castles is a two- or four-player simultaneous-turn strategy game. Each player sees the entire battlefield and protects a 5×5 homeland with four randomly placed castles and four cannons. Build rounds provide limited wood, brick, and steel walls. Attack rounds let players rotate each surviving cannon in exact 10-degree steps and fire once.

Shots are direct-fire: enemy walls must be broken before castles can be hit. Wood can be penetrated with reduced follow-through damage, while brick and steel absorb more impact. Nobody is eliminated early; all players complete six rounds and compete on weighted siege damage plus surviving-castle bonuses.

How we built it

The game is a Devvit Web interactive post with a Phaser battlefield. Authoritative match and leaderboard state lives in Devvit Redis, while Devvit Realtime synchronizes matchmaking, locked turns, and shared resolution events. TypeScript modules separate rules, storage, API handlers, and Phaser presentation.

The hook

All commanders secretly commit against the same visible battlefield, then watch the barrage resolve together. Random homelands, limited walls, exact cannon angles, recurring opponents, and a persistent lifetime leaderboard make every six-round rivalry different.

Challenges

The hardest part was keeping four independent clients deterministic while preserving satisfying animation. We built one authoritative rules engine, idempotent scoring, and an all-player turn barrier, then exercised them through real multi-browser tests.

Accomplishments

The release has a complete six-round loop, two- and four-player maps, penetration and material resistance, autonomous villagers and soldiers, pixel-art effects, and a persistent global leaderboard. The final automated evaluation scored 10/10, including a four-browser match that completes without hanging.

What we learned

Server authority and visual spectacle can coexist when resolution events are explicit and replay ability. Testing the multiplayer barrier early also made every later gameplay iteration safer.

What's next

Community seasons can add rotating battlefield modifiers, named banners, weekly siege challenges, and leaderboard resets while preserving the fast six-round format.

Built With

• css
• devvit
• html5
• phaser.js
• reddit
• typescript