Connected Kingdom

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  Build your level

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  Build your solution

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  Solve other redditor's level

Inspiration

Connected Kingdom started with the idea of turning computer networking into something visual, approachable, and fun. Instead of diving too deep I decided to stop at building a fun game.

Reddit felt like the perfect home for it. Each post can become a playable community challenge, while players can compare solutions, scores, completion times, and solve rates directly inside the feed.

What it does

Connected Kingdom is a pixel-art network puzzle game that runs inside Reddit. Players place a limited inventory of network pieces—including routers, CDNs, fiber, and mirrors—to connect every home on the map. Terrain changes how signals travel: Forest weakens a connection. Mountains block it. Water extends signals in their current direction. Hills boost nearby network pieces. Mirrors redirect signals, including at 45-degree angles. Homes require different amounts of connectivity before turning on. Players can submit solutions, earn stars, compare leaderboard scores, and see community statistics such as completion times and first-try solve rates. Connected Kingdom also includes a complete level builder. Players can design maps, place and verify a working solution, publish the finished challenge as a Reddit custom post, and send other players directly to that new post.

How we built it

We built Connected Kingdom as a TypeScript monorepo with separate packages for game rules, shared data models, UI, and platform integrations. The puzzle engine is kept independent from the presentation layer. It evaluates signal propagation, terrain effects, connectivity, scoring, mirrors, and winning conditions without depending on Reddit or the renderer. The game board is rendered with Phaser and custom Canvas-based pixel-art tools. The same UI supports desktop, mobile, inline Reddit posts, expanded fullscreen play, and the level builder. For Reddit integration, we used Devvit Web, custom posts, navigation, user actions, and Redis. Redis stores leaderboards, progress, creator maps, solve statistics, completion times, and recorded subscription actions. The web version uses a platform adapter backed by local storage, allowing us to test the same game outside Reddit. We also created a sprite-import pipeline for turning larger concept sheets into consistent runtime assets for terrain, buildings, network pieces, animations, and connected forest tiles.

Challenges we ran into

One of the largest challenges was making the same game feel natural in every Reddit surface. Inline posts, mobile fullscreen views, desktop webviews, and builder screens all have different dimensions. We had to dynamically rotate wide maps on mobile, scale pixel art without blurring it, translate touches back into canonical board coordinates, and prevent unwanted page scrolling. Signal propagation also became more complex as new mechanics were introduced. Mirrors needed to redirect signals without allowing them to pass through, water needed to extend a signal only along its original direction, and hill bonuses needed to increase strength without incorrectly multiplying or branching it. Devvit introduced its own challenges. We needed to correctly separate browser and server responsibilities, route authenticated API requests through the app server, store community data in Redis, create custom posts, and navigate players to newly published levels.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are especially proud that Connected Kingdom grew from a single networking puzzle into a complete community creation system. Players can now: Play directly from a Reddit post. Build and verify their own levels. Publish levels as new custom posts. Compare scores, times, attempts, and solve rates. Explore difficult maps created by other players. Use the complete interface on both desktop and mobile. We are also proud of the game’s visual identity. The connected forests, animated radio towers, moving packets, signal overlays, pixel tooltips, wooden interface, and detailed kingdom artwork make the networking mechanics feel like part of one cohesive world. Underneath that presentation is a deterministic puzzle engine with automated tests covering signal propagation, terrain, mirrors, generated levels, scoring, and known solutions.

What we learned

We learned how valuable it is to keep game rules separate from rendering and platform code. That separation allowed us to reuse the same puzzle engine across Reddit, the standalone web version, the builder, automated tests, and development tools. We also learned that mobile support is more than shrinking a desktop interface. Touch interaction, tooltip behavior, board orientation, readable signal indicators, safe viewport sizing, and scrolling all needed to be designed intentionally. Most importantly, we learned how Reddit posts can become more than containers for content. With Devvit, each post can act as a playable level, a leaderboard, a creation tool, and a gathering place for a community challenge.

What's next for Connected Kingdom

Next, we want to expand both the puzzle mechanics and the community experience. Planned improvements include: More network pieces with new routing behaviors. Additional terrain and environmental effects. More campaign and procedurally generated levels. Better discovery and ranking for community-created maps. Creator profiles and saved level collections. Daily or weekly community challenges. Improved animations, sound effects, and accessibility options. More detailed statistics comparing different player solutions. Our long-term goal is to make Connected Kingdom a growing library of community-built networking puzzles, where every Reddit post offers a new kingdom to connect.

Built With

• devvit
• phaser.js