Guess By

One crop, one shot. Trick them or get tricked.

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Inspiration

GuessBy came from bait and switch memes I wanted to turn that joke into a full game where players upload images, hide the answer inside a tiny crop, and challenge everyone else to figure it out from almost nothing.

What it does

GuessBy is a quick visual guessing game where one player creates a challenge by uploading an image and cropping it down to a small clue. Everyone else sees only that cropped section and gets one shot to make their best guess.

Players can create challenges from almost anything:

  • Celebrities.
  • Cartoons.
  • Animals
  • Logos.
  • Random objects.
  • Anything else that works as a trick picture.

After the guess, the game reveals the real answer, shows the top community guesses, and tells players how they did. The goal is to make every post feel like a tiny bait-and-switch puzzle. Those who successfully trick earn a leaderboard points for tricksters. Those who guess correctly earn sleuth points. It's a battle between who can get tricked and who can solve.

How we built it

I built GuessBy around a simple creator-to-player flow. A creator uploads an image, chooses the crop area, sets the clue text, and assigns the answer. Then the challenge is published for other players to try.

The core of the game is the cropping tool, which lets creators drag and resize the selection box to decide exactly what part of the image players will see. On the player side, the challenge view is designed to be fast and low-friction so people can make a guess immediately without overthinking the interface.

I also built the game around social sharing and community reactions, since the fun comes from seeing what people guess from a tiny image fragment and how badly they get baited.

Challenges we ran into

One challenge was making sure the crop mechanic felt fair without removing the joke. The crop has to be small enough to be tricky, but not so small that the challenge becomes impossible or unreadable.

Another challenge was keeping the concept flexible. Since GuessBy can work with celebrities, cars, cartoons, animals, and more, I had to make the system generic enough to handle all kinds of images while still feeling simple to use.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I'm proud that GuessBy turns a simple meme format into a playable experience. It captures the surprise of a bait-and-switch reveal while still feeling like a real game with rules, structure, and community interaction.

I'm also proud that the game is flexible enough to support many different kinds of content. It can be funny, competitive, weird, or surprisingly difficult depending on what people upload.

Most of all, I'm proud that the game feels instantly understandable. Players only need to see one crop and make one guess, but that tiny interaction creates a lot of suspense and comedy.

What we learned

I learned that simple mechanics can be surprisingly strong when the social idea behind them is good. A cropped image may seem basic, but it becomes engaging when people are trying to outsmart each other.

I also learned that user-generated content is powerful, especially when the tool is easy enough for anyone to create with. The game works because the challenge comes from the community, not just from handcrafted images.

Finally, we learned that the best party-style games don’t need complicated controls — they just need a clear joke, a clear rule, and a satisfying reveal.

What's next for GuessBy

Next, we want to make GuessBy even more fun to browse and share.

Possible future additions include:

  • Better challenge discovery and feeds.
  • More creative crop tools and presets.
  • Theme bait and switch challenges
  • Special event bait and switch challenges

Built With

  • devvit
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