SomeoneSave.Us

Inspiration

What if the games we play didn’t just live on our screens, but actually became a part of our daily lives? This idea has fascinated us! We wanted to completely disrupt how users interact with games by blurring the line between the physical and digital worlds. Instead of grinding for hours with a mouse and keyboard, we envisioned a game where completing real life tasks or missions directly dictates your in game success!

But a living world needs living inhabitants and we were tired of the generic, scripted NPCs found in traditional games. To fix this, we integrated AI agents that have a mind and a personality of their own. Rather than just repeating lines of dialogue, our agents converse with one another and actively gossip about the players and what they are doing in their lives. Knowing that the townspeople are talking behind your back about the real world chores/quests you did (or didn't!) finish brings a hilarious and unprecedented level of immersion to the experience.

What It Does

SomeoneSaveUs is a multiplayer idle game that requires users to take action in their real lives to progress in the digital world. Every player has a in game persona(AI agent) whos emotional By assigning daily quests that are linked to an autonomous in game AI agent, the game holds you accountable for your real life productivity. (add the fact that the agent is someone that you want to take care of and dont want to let down, similar to a friend/coach, its easier to reach goals if you have someone to work your way to end with)

Here is how the gameplay loop connects your real world to the digital one:

Add Isla to your group chat, she handles the back-and-forth between you and the game. Once she's in, she generates a world and sends everyone a link. You click through, do a quick setup, choose some quests and you are set!

Each player gets an agent. Their whole job is collecting rocks and logs to build stuff. Building structures earns XP, leveling up the whole group. Hit certain levels and you unlock cooler buildings, then move on to a new island! The game keeps giving you newer and more harder islands to escape!!!!

The twist is your agent actually knows how you're doing. So complete a real-world goal/task/quest, and ping it in the gc, and they get a boost, faster, more efficient, actually productive. Blow it off and they slow down and start complaining about you to the other agents on the island. Your friends' agents hear it and It's not subtle :p

Nobody beats the island solo. If you're slacking, your crew feels it. If everyone's locked in, the agents thrive, the structures go up, and you move on to bigger, better and harder islands!!!

What's New Here?

First, instead of forcing users to build a new network from scratch, or get a app we are injecting your game into established friend group chats. This creates immediate, high-stakes accountability because players are performing for people whose opinions they already value in real life.

Second, we shift the psychology of productivity from "selfish" to "selfless." It's the Tamagotchi Effect. Players aren't just checking off a to-do list for themselves; they are caring for a digital proxy that relies entirely on them to survive and thrive and escape the island. It taps into our innate human desire to nurture and protect.

Lastly, your agent will 100% trash talk you in front of your friends. When people fail their goals, they often beat themselves up, which leads to a shame spiral and more procrastination. Having an AI roast another AI softens the blow of failure through comedy. It introduces lighthearted peer pressure without making the player feel genuinely attacked by their actual human friends!!

How We Built It

The system is designed as a real time, multi surface experience powered by a combination of frontend, backend, AI, and messaging infrastructure which is all hosted and playable in production!

Core Stack

Frontend: React, Vite, TypeScript
FrontEnd Hosting: Vercel
3D Rendering: Three.js with React Three Fiber(saved us a gazillion hrs)
Database and Socket Sync: Convex DB
Authentication: Clerk (phone number based)
Messaging Layer: Photon iMessage with Spectrum.ts
LLM Model: K2 Think V2
Image Processing: Google Gemma
Voice: ElevenLabs Text to speech
Backend Jobs: Python Flask backend running in DigitalOcean
Transaction Integration: Knot API
And yes its a monorepo thru Turborepo

Frontend

The web app is mobile first and renders a low poly 3D island. Players can move around, place buildings, and see agents interacting in real time. State is managed through a centralized provider and synced through Convex reactive queries.

Real Time Sync

Convex acts as the single source of truth. Any change, such as a check in or building placement, updates instantly across all connected clients without requiring custom WebSocket infrastructure.

iMessage Agent

The Photon agent allows players to interact with the game entirely through iMessage. Players can:

Start or join islands
Check in on goals
Manage goals
Vote on major decisions
Receive updates and messages

This makes the game feel ambient rather than something you have to open manually.

AI Layer

K2 Think V2 powers every piece of generated text:

Goal validation
Agent personality creation
Morning reminders
Gossip between agents
Weekly summaries
Major narrative moments like ascension

Each agent has a persistent personality stored as structured data. This is injected into every AI call so the character stays consistent over time.

Backend Jobs

All scheduled and event driven behavior runs in Python inside DigitalOcean This includes:

Morning reminders
Miss detection at the end of the day
Build progression
Weekly summaries
Gossip generation
Reward generation

Transaction Based Habits

Through Knot API, users can optionally connect real world transactions. For example, we can see if you ate McDonalds or not, keeping you accountable for healthy eating.

Challenges We Ran Into

One major challenge was maintaining consistent agent personalities across many independent AI calls. Since each message is generated separately, we had to design prompts, tools, and data structures that preserve tone and behavior over time.

Another challenge was synchronizing the game across two different surfaces. Players might interact through iMessage while others are actively viewing the island. Using Convex as a real time backend along with a strong syncing strategy allowed us to avoid building custom infrastructure for this.

Rendering a smooth 3D experience on mobile browsers also required careful optimization. We had to manage performance constraints while keeping the world visually engaging.

Handling phone number identity across different formats was another issue. Normalizing everything into a consistent format was necessary to ensure reliable communication between systems.

Finally, working with structured AI outputs required building robust parsing logic, since model responses are not always perfectly formatted.

Accomplishments That We’re Proud Of

100% Satisfaction rate from fellow HackPrinceton beta testing, everyone around us found the game fun!!!
We built a fully interactive multiplayer system where real world actions directly affect a shared virtual environment.

*The game looks like a game!

We created AI agents that feel consistent and expressive over time without fine tuning or persistent sessions.
We designed an experience that lives naturally inside iMessage, reducing friction and increasing engagement.
We implemented real time synchronization across all players without building custom networking infrastructure.
We combined multiple external systems into one cohesive product where each integration plays a meaningful role.

What’s Next

We plan to move from manually triggered jobs to fully persistent scheduled execution so the system runs continuously.

We want to build a timelapse feature that shows the full history of an island over time.

We are exploring AI generated monuments that reflect each group’s unique journey.

We aim to deepen the Knot integration so habits can be verified automatically without manual input.

We also want to expand support beyond iOS to reach more users.

World Domination

Prize Tracks and What We Did

Prize Track	What We Did
Healthcare Track	Utilizes AI-driven social accountability to combat executive dysfunction and promote healthy daily habits.
HackPrinceton Game Track	Delivered a complete cooperative game with progression, shared goals, social dynamics, and a persistent world driven by real life actions.
Agents in iMessage by Photon	Built the entire communication layer through iMessage, including reminders, group messages, voting, and commands, making the game playable without opening the web app.
Best Use of K2 Think V2	Used K2 for all AI functionality including personalities, reminders, gossip, summaries, and narrative events, with consistent character behavior across time.
Best Use of DigitalOcean	Hosted a multi agent system where characters interact, coordinate, and respond collectively to group behavior on Digital Ocean.
Knot API Track	Integrated transaction based habit verification so real world purchases can automatically trigger goal completion and update the island.
Best Use of Gemma 4	Used for strong photo intelligence to understand images shared in the group chat, enabling automatic quest validation and completion.