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  hellishgolf

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  daily golf course on reddit

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  use power ups by collecting gold

Hellish Golf - Hackathon Pitch

Inspiration

I found out about this Reddit hackathon while scrolling on X, just four days before I started building. I wanted a game that makes users come back to Reddit every day — something they discover right in their feed and that keeps them on the platform as long as possible. I deliberately avoided the "play-to-earn" model you see in Telegram mini apps; I didn't want people playing for money. I wanted a pure, fun gameplay loop that's daily by design, so the game itself becomes a reason to open Reddit again.

The core concept actually sparked while I was browsing itch.io. I stumbled upon a brilliantly frustrating open-source golf game, which perfectly captured the "brutally hard" indie vibe I was looking for. I adapted that concept, utilized some of its open-source textures to hit the ground running, and pushed the mechanics further: make it hellishly hard, then add a daily hook and powerups to give players an edge.

What it does

Hellish Golf is a daily golf challenge that lives inside the Reddit feed:

• One shared hole per day — every player in the subreddit gets the same map, picked deterministically from the date, so the whole community competes on equal footing.
• Real 2D physics — bouncy walls, hazards, and precise shot control make every stroke count.
• Powerups — collect coins while playing and spend them on buffs you can arm mid-round to survive the hardest holes.
• Leaderboards — see how your stroke count stacks up against everyone else that day.
• Playable directly in the feed — the post expands into the full game, no app install, no leaving Reddit.

How we built it

• Built with AI pair-programming (Codex and Claude), coding the game from scratch with me over about 3 days of iterating.
• Phaser for rendering, Rapier2D for physics.
• Devvit for the Reddit integration — deploying via the Devvit CLI was surprisingly easy: a one-click auth and a deploy command, and the game was live.
• A serverless bridge connects Devvit to Supabase for persistent scores and leaderboards.
• The daily system seeds the map selection from the date, so everyone gets the same challenge with zero coordination.

Challenges we ran into

The hardest parts by far were the game UI and the physics. That's where most of the time went — endless trial and error: ball behavior, collisions, tuning difficulty so it's hellish but fair, and making the UI render cleanly inside the Reddit feed at different sizes. Getting the inline feed mode (playing without leaving the feed) working smoothly was its own battle.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Shipped a complete, playable, physics-driven game on Reddit in ~4 days, from idea to live subreddit.
• The daily hook works: one shared hole, real stakes, a reason to come back tomorrow.
• A full meta-loop — coins, a shop, powerups — layered on top of tight core gameplay.
• It runs right in the feed, which is exactly where a retention game should live.

What we learned

I learned how to take a game from idea to a fully addictive daily loop, live on Reddit — a platform with 100M+ users, meaning a potentially huge player base from day one. I also learned how far you can get in a few days by combining a clear product vision (retention through a daily hook) with AI-assisted development, and that Devvit makes shipping interactive experiences to Reddit genuinely easy.

What's next for hellishgolf

• More maps and a bigger daily rotation, plus special event holes.
• Streaks and rewards for playing consecutive days, to deepen the daily habit.
• More powerups and shop items to expand the strategy layer.
• Ghost replays — watch the best player's run of the day.
• Weekly/monthly leaderboards and subreddit-vs-subreddit competitions.
• Polishing with fully original art and audio as the game grows.

Built With

• calude
• codex
• phaser.js