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  Landing screen of PixelTrail with responsive UI and Play button , Sound button and Controls instruction

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  Player navigating obstacles, defeating enemies, and collecting rewards during a run

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  Endless runner gameplay featuring procedural terrain, enemies, and collectibles

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  Dynamic gameplay showcasing the day/night cycle and increasing game difficulty

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  Game Over screen displaying Top 5 high scores, kills, timestamps, and quick restart option

PixelTrail

🎮 Inspiration

PixelTrail started with a simple idea: create a game that people can discover instantly, enjoy, and return to repeatedly.

For Reddit’s Games with a Hook Hackathon, I wanted to build more than just a simple endless runner. I wanted to create a replayable experience where every run feels different and players have a reason to improve their score and keep coming back.

I was inspired by classic endless runners and pixel-art games. My goal was to bring that feeling into Reddit through Devvit while creating an experience that fits naturally inside the Reddit platform.

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🚀 What it does

PixelTrail is an endless pixel-art action runner built using Reddit Devvit and Phaser.

Players control a hero who continuously moves through procedurally generated environments. During each run, players collect coins and diamonds, defeat enemies, avoid obstacles, manage health, and try to achieve the highest score possible.

The game includes:

• Endless runner gameplay
• Procedurally generated terrain
• Ground and flying enemies
• Player-controlled shooting
• Coins, diamonds, and health systems
• Score tracking
• Dynamic day/night cycle
• Responsive desktop and mobile controls
• Runtime-generated pixel-art visuals

The core gameplay loop is simple: survive longer, collect more rewards, improve your skills, and beat your previous high score.

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🛠️ How I built it

I built PixelTrail completely solo from the ground up.

I used Reddit Devvit to integrate the game into Reddit’s interactive posts and Phaser as the main game engine. The project was developed using JavaScript and TypeScript, with Vite used for development and building the application.

I created the major gameplay systems myself, including:

• Player movement and shooting
• Enemy behavior
• Procedural world generation
• Collectible systems
• Score and UI systems
• Day/night cycle effects
• Audio effects
• Responsive mobile controls

To keep the game lightweight and efficient, many visual elements such as sprites and effects were generated programmatically instead of depending on large external asset files.

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⚡ Challenges I ran into

Building a complete game alone was challenging, especially while learning and adapting to a new platform.

The biggest challenges were making a traditional game experience work smoothly inside Reddit’s environment, optimizing performance inside a web view, and ensuring the controls worked well across different screen sizes.

Creating multiple connected gameplay systems, debugging interactions between them, improving performance, and polishing the user experience required continuous testing and iteration.

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🏆 Accomplishments that I’m proud of

I am proud that I was able to take PixelTrail from an idea to a fully playable Reddit Devvit game completely on my own.

Some achievements I am especially proud of:

• Successfully building and deploying a working Devvit application
• Creating a complete endless runner gameplay loop
• Implementing procedural generation systems
• Creating custom pixel-art visuals at runtime
• Adding responsive desktop and mobile controls
• Building a complete playable experience inside Reddit

Seeing PixelTrail running directly inside Reddit after building every system myself was the biggest achievement.

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📚 What I learned

Building PixelTrail taught me a lot about game development, web technologies, and creating interactive experiences.

I learned how to:

• Work with Reddit Devvit
• Build games using Phaser
• Design replayable gameplay loops
• Create procedural game systems
• Optimize browser-based games
• Solve technical problems independently

This project pushed me to learn quickly, experiment with new tools, and transform an idea into a complete playable experience.

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🔮 What’s next for PIXELTRAIL

If I continue developing PixelTrail, I would like to add features that improve long-term engagement, such as:

• Leaderboards
• Daily challenges
• More environments
• Additional enemy types
• Character progression
• More community-focused features

My goal is to continue improving PixelTrail into a game that Reddit users enjoy playing and returning to regularly...

Built With

• css3
• devvit
• html5
• javascript
• phaser.js
• typescript
• vite
• webgl