Kinoticon

Guess today's movie from 6 emoji clues in 6 tries or less. Share your results daily!

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Inspiration

About a year ago, I was playing an emoji movie-charades guessing game in a simple messaging format with my partner, and it clicked that this could become a real web game with a Wordle-style daily loop.

I prototyped it quickly in Lovable, didn’t like where it landed, and rebuilt it from scratch. That rebuild turned into a few weeks of vibecoding: it began with typing-only input and, through iteration, turned into current word cloud mechanic.

Why this hackathon

After sharing that early build with a small group of friends, I left it in “unfinished but playable” limbo and moved on. At the time I was working as a senior motion designer, and since then I’ve shifted into a primary project manager role (with creatives/ads as a secondary track: team lead/producer).

When I saw the Reddit Daily Games hackathon announcement, I immediately thought this old unpolished game was a perfect match. It also felt like a good way to compare my growth over the last year in both product design, UI, prompting and development knowledge overall.

What I built (Kinoticon)

Kinoticon is a daily movie guessing game built for Reddit with Devvit.

  • Players get 6 emojis that hint at the movie’s plot.
  • They pick words from a word cloud (real title words mixed with decoys).
  • They have 6 tries to find enough correct words and reveal the title.
  • Each day is a new puzzle (UTC), with stats, streaks, a leaderboard, and shareable results.

How I built it

The first version was driven mostly by Claude Sonnet, then I switched to Composer for more repetitive tasks and cleanup. The UI started close to my original unreleased interface, but I wanted Kinoticon to have its own identity, so I explored a Win95-inspired retro theme.

After a few quick castdevs, it was clear the retro look shouldn’t be the default skin, but I couldn’t bring myself to cut it. It’s still in the game as an optional theme, and players can switch to it seamlessly.

Challenges

  • Getting the puzzle “fair”: emojis that are readable but not always obvious, and decoy words that feel challenging without feeling random.
  • Keeping scope under control: shipping a clean daily loop instead of chasing extra modes and features.
  • Making it feel native to Reddit: designed for daily posts, quick play sessions, and sharing/discussion.

Why it matters to me

I genuinely enjoyed polishing this and making it feel like a real product instead of a forgotten prototype. I’m hoping Kinoticon becomes my gateway into a game dev.

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