Paint N Seek

Inspiration

Meccha Chameleon

What it does

Every day, the virtual museum features a new artwork. The game loop has two phases:

Hide: Players drag a mannequin into the artwork, paint it with colors sampled from the painting's palette, and position it to blend in perfectly with the scenery. Seek: The same artwork becomes a giant, community-generated hidden-object puzzle. Players race against the clock to find mannequins that other community members have camouflaged.

How we built it

The architecture required a robust mix of real-time game rendering and asynchronous backend state management.

Challenges we ran into

Performance within an iFrame: The game runs inside an iFrame on Reddit. Keeping the initial load fast and the asset weight low while running a full Phaser game loop was tricky. I had to optimize assets and keep heavy dependencies out of the initial React entry point.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Integrating a canvas-based Phaser game inside a modern React application required careful state synchronization and lifecycle management to prevent memory leaks and ensure smooth transitions between the splash screen, the UI overlay, and the game scene.

What we learned

I learned how to balance an ecosystem where the content for one half of the game (Seeking) relies entirely on the output of the other half (Hiding). I implemented procedural "house dummies" to ensure the game functions even when a player is the very first one to play that day.

What's next for Paint N Seek

maybe a 3d version

Built With

• devvit
• hono
• node.js
• phaser3
• react19
• redis
• tailwindcss4
• typescript
• vite