Inspiration
I’ve always loved fast-paced, weapon-heavy action games like the classic Ratchet & Clank series — the satisfying recoil jumps, varied weapons, and chaotic enemy waves. When I saw the Reddit Daily Games Hackathon, I immediately thought: “What if I could take that feeling and make it a short, replayable daily challenge that lives directly inside Reddit?”
What it does
Maelor The Robot Survival is a 2D sidescroller action platformer shooter, players will play in a different map to in everyday with different weapon rotations. Players will fight enemies and collect XP to become stronger than ever. Discussions on individual player runs and experience is the root of the daily challenge!
How we built it
I wanted every player to face the exact same challenge each day so discussions would make sense. I used the current date as a seed to shuffle weapon order and pick a map — that way it’s fair and replayable without being truly random, alongside player weapon rotations.
Enemy spawning came next. Enemies spawn around the player and the player bullets them gives XP that upgrades weapons and health mid-run. I kept the pool small to avoid lag — optimization was a big worry after early mobile exports crashed.
Mobile was the hardest part. Reddit’s embed is portrait-locked unfortunately, still feels good even if someone doesn’t rotate. In order to have the mobile version be fun, I decided to have the player fire automatically at enemies for players to focus on agility to avoid damage. This required an aim assist system that helps target enemies. I also added a "Boost" button for players to use the weapon recoil and jump much higher, like how playthroughs on desktop would be as well. All of the mobile code was paved by my input detection system, a large script that scans if the player is on mobile, desktop (with keyboard or gamepad), if they are on mobile or on gamepad, aim assist is activated and the proper UI labels for the buttons appear.
Built in GameMaker beta, exported to Devvit, tested in my private test sub. Lots of restarts, debug messages, and "why is this black again?" moments — but seeing the daily cycle actually work in Reddit made it all worth it, especially seeing all the chaos unfold with no stutter on desktop and mobile!
Challenges I ran into
Definitely one of the hardest things I have ever made! I have never used Reddit, so getting the project started from Devvit, understanding how the cmd commands exports the game into reddit was very hard for me to get my head wrapped around.
The 2nd and main challenge Having to incorporate mobile playability for my game was a nightmare. I never intended for my game to be played on mobile at all. If I wanted to win "Best use of GameMaker" and "Mobile Experience" motivated me to translate my desktop game to mobile, I knew I had to go all out. I could've easily made a one tap game, but I knew there was too much potential being lost if I didn't try making the game playable in mobile. Poor optimization, hard to control player movement, and manual player aiming to fire, it was not fun to play at all. Thankfully, I got it down. Unfortunately, as stated before, Reddit does not allow landscape orientation for mobile games yet, forcing playthroughs to be portrait, the game is playable but is not completely seamless as much as I wanted it to be, this is out of my control but at least the game runs like butter and is fun!
The final getting my game uploaded to Reddit. I kept on getting errors in the cmd terminal telling me that the upload media failed. I scaled back my game in size by reusing tilemap textures and removing audio that really didn't impact player feedback. Upon doing this, I accidentally deleted scripts that were responsible my weapons behavior, room transitions, and text pop ups. I was able to remember for the most part what I had originally, thankfully.
Accomplishments that I am proud of
I finally completed my input detection system that I had built from the ground up. This system allows me to use for future titles making it extremely easy for my to make desktop, console, and mobile games. Seeing a chaotic game on mobile be fluid and seeing my friends playtest and having a good time is a feeling like no other. Regardless of the results of this game, I now have the tools to make a full mobile game.
What I learned
I learned how to optimize my game even further than I could've imagined. I learned how to make a mobile game (for next time, I now to make a portrait game), and how to make games for reddit, which is exciting as I want to have players enjoy what I can create!
What's next for Maelor The Robot: Survival
This is just the beginning; I consider this a demo/beta for the full standalone game. Combat is the highlight of the game, and I hop players all over the world love it. The standalone title will feature, anti-gravity sections, planetoid gravity levels and a story. Perhaps the planetoid gravity levels will be present later on for this game!
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.