Dial It In

A daily social guessing game where you test your intuition against the Reddit hive mind.

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Inspiration

The idea for Dial It In came from a very familiar place for everyone: doomscrolling on TikTok. I went down a rabbit hole of watching people play the wavelength game against each other, and it immediately intrigued me. As a long-time Redditor, my mind instantly went to the vibrant, chaotic, and fascinating communities on Reddit.

I'm an avid follower of subreddits like r/AmItheAsshole, and I'm constantly amazed by the vast spectrum of opinions and the passionate debates that unfold in the comments. You can have one post where the community is in perfect unison, and another where the "YTA" and "NTA" judgments are completely split. It got me thinking: what if there was a way to capture and gamify this dynamic?

What it does

Here’s how it works:

  1. Daily Spectrum: Every day, a new spectrum (e.g., "Harmless" to "Cancel-worthy") is presented to the community.
  2. Clue-Based Guessing: Players are given three clues and must place them on the spectrum where they think the community consensus lies.
  3. Scoring against the Hive Mind: Your score is based on how close your guesses are to the average guess of the entire community.
  4. Social Sharing: Players can easily share their results to Reddit comments, fostering discussion and friendly competition.
  5. Community-Driven Content: The Spectrum Lab allows users to submit their own spectrum ideas, which are then voted and chosen by users and featured in future daily games, creating a self-sustaining content engine.

How I built it

Built entirely on the Reddit Developer Platform (Devvit) using the React template

Key Technical Achievements:

  • Cross-tab sync: BroadcastChannel API ensures game state stays consistent across multiple open tabs
  • Locked results system: Time-based reveal mechanism creates anticipation and shared community moment
  • Dual leaderboard architecture: Daily(and all-time rankings with efficient Redis sorted sets
  • I built a full UGC pipeline that allows users to submit, vote on, and moderate new spectrums. This includes:
  • Submission Form with validation
  • Voting System with Top/New/Rising sort algorithms
  • Moderator Queue for quality control
  • Automatic Promotion of approved spectrums into the daily rotation

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I dedicated a significant amount of effort to ensuring the game is not just functional, but delightful to use on mobile devices, which I think is crucial, and honestly just the game in general this was the first time I've ever thought of developing a game on Reddit, the React Template and Devvit docs made it really painless and easy to do.

What I've learned

Limiting players to one game per day forced us to make every interaction meaningful. I couldn't rely on volume or grinding—each of the 3 rounds had to feel satisfying. This constraint actually improved the design by forcing me to focus on quality over quantity.

What's next

  • Achievement System: Collectible badges for milestones (perfect games, long streaks, spectrum creator)
  • Themed Spectrum Weeks: Curated spectrum packs around events (e.g., "Movie Week," "Food Week," "Reddit Classics")
  • Cross-subreddit Challenges: Compare how different communities rate the same clues (e.g., r/movies vs r/television rating "The Office")

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