Community Tier List

Inspiration

Last year, I built a standalone interactive tier list web app. I believed in its fun yet informative format. I built it on nights and weekends alongside my day job, but the project ultimately stalled; it was a ghost town because tier lists need an active community to make them fun and useful.

When I learned about Devvit, something clicked. I realized I had been trying to build a community around a tool when I should have been bringing the tool to the community. Reddit is the home of opinions, debates, and rankings. I saw an opportunity to give my old project a new life where it truly belonged - right inside the subreddit feed.

What it does

Community Tier List gamifies opinions. Users rank items in tiers and into tiers and watch the community consensus evolve and eventually become a go-to reference. It’s designed to spark the kind of passionate discussion unique to Reddit, providing an interactive format that makes participation significantly more engaging.

Community Tier List works in two ways:

1. Reddit Game: Community Tier List is listed as a game on r/gamesonreddit launchpad and has an official community r/tierlist_app where we drop daily tier lists (ranking everything from Movies, Video Game, etc.) that are general in nature that invite Reddit users to rank and debate.
2. A Community / Mod Tool: Any subreddit can install the app to let their mods and members create niche-specific tier lists, turning passive scrollers into active participants.

How we built it and Challenges

When we started building it, we had two very specific goals in mind.

The first goal was premium UX and design. It needed to feel native inside Reddit, not like something force-fitted or low effort. We obsessed over every detail - splash screen behavior, loading speed, spacing, voting flow, clarity of copy, and how it feels in both desktop and mobile. The result is an experience that feels polished and native.

The second goal was building for two very different users at the same time: players and moderators. For players, it had to feel intuitive, engaging and frictionless. For moderators, it had to provide real control: who can create posts (everyone or mods only), voting windows, featured items, bulk import items, admin roles, and moderation workflows.

Balancing those two worlds was the real engineering challenge. The result is something that feels like a lightweight game on the front end and a structured community engine behind the scenes.

The above two goals made it very challenging, requiring multiple iterations. We also hit a few roadblocks navigating the nuances of the Devvit platform, but the developer docs and the developer Discord community were incredibly helpful.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

1. We launched the app a few days ago and haven't actively started promoting it. Yet, we are starting to see some organic growth - the app is already seeing 200-300 daily active engagers and people have started creating tier lists posts on their own. We’ve also had moderators from a few communities reach out proactively to request features.
2. We believe we have one of the most functional and visually polished designs on the platform - both web and mobile.

What's next for Community Tier List

We are doubling down on the Daily Game format. Our goal is to curate a consistent schedule of daily tier lists on our main hub to build the community and encourage people to engage and create tier lists. Simultaneously, we are reaching out to subreddit moderators to install the app in their communities to give their members a fun and engaging post format and create a crowdsourced community resource

Built With

• react