PlayHue
A daily turf war for Reddit. Four factions. One shared board. Too few moves to win alone.
Play on r/PlayHue
Inspiration
Most Reddit games are fun for five minutes, then you forget them. But Reddit already has the good stuff: people pick sides, argue in threads, and come back tomorrow to see who won.
So we asked a slightly mean question: what if you literally could not win alone?
PlayHue started as a shared map you paint with your faction, then we starved the action budget. Three Action Points. A fully shielded tile needs four actions to capture. Suddenly you are not grinding. You are in the comments saying “someone hit this shield, I’ll claim after.” The post stops being a lonely game window and becomes a War Room.
We also wanted a daily ritual. The board resets at midnight UTC. Yesterday’s war ends. Today starts clean. And visually we went quiet on purpose: warm Japandi tiles, soft keycaps, colors named Matcha, Indigo, Terracotta, and Yuzu. If it was going to live in a Reddit feed, it should feel calm and tactile, not like a neon arcade ad.
What it does
PlayHue is a daily asynchronous turf war inside a Reddit post.
Each Season, Destiny assigns you to one of four hues: Matcha, Indigo, Terracotta, or Yuzu. Loyalties reshuffle next Season. Your Profile keeps Season History so your past hues and placements still feel like yours.
Each day, factions expand from permanent corner Capitals across one shared grid. Select a tile, then:
| Action | Effect |
|---|---|
| Claim | Take an empty tile, or an enemy tile with no shields left (must be adjacent) |
| Attack | Remove one shield from an enemy tile |
| Fortify | Add one shield to a friendly tile (max 3) |
Every action costs 1 AP. You hold at most 3 AP, regenerating 1 AP every 2 hours. That is the whole economy: short enough for a coffee break, tight enough that one player cannot crack a fortress alone.
At 00:00 UTC the board freezes, a Daily Winner is recorded, and the canvas resets. Across a 7-day Season:
- War Room ranks factions by daily wins
- Hue Points track personal contribution (Claim +5, Fortify +2)
- Hall of Fame ranks individual players
- Trophy Room badges and a Wordle-style Share Daily Report for comments
New players get a short 3-step guide after faction reveal. Returning players see a live splash teaser in the feed, then jump into the full board.
How we built it
PlayHue is a Devvit Web app for Reddit Interactive Posts.
- Feed: lightweight
splash.htmlwith an animated board teaser, season/day, and CTA (Reveal Your Hue/Return as {Faction}) - Expanded play: full
game.htmlwith battle board, ranks, profile, and guide - Stack: React 19 + Tailwind CSS 4 + Vite on the client; Hono / tRPC + Redis on the server for board state, AP regen, faction balance, scores, and seasons
- Schedule: daily board reset at 00:00 UTC
Gameplay UX is select-then-act: choose a tile first, then only valid moves light up. Disabled moves explain why. Actions live in a tile popover so the board stays the hero. Tiles are tightly spaced squircles with soft depth and faction-colored selection, plus small animations on claim, fortify, and attack.
Challenges we ran into
AP balance. Too generous and one dedicated player owns the map. Too stingy and the board feels dead. Capitals, adjacency rules, and the “3 shields need 4 actions” rule were many iterations of the same goal: teamwork required, but still satisfying in two minutes.
Teaching without a wall of text. Territory + shields + regen is a lot on first visit. Early help screens made friends glaze over. We moved to 3-step onboarding that separates the goal, the action economy, and HP scoring.
Identity across seasons. If Destiny reshuffles factions, do you still feel like you? Season History and the Trophy Room keep a trail of loyalty and placement.
Feed vs full game. Splash has to load fast and still feel like PlayHue. Heavy UI stays in the expanded view; the inline view is the teaser and invitation.
Mobile inside Reddit. Fitting a readable board, selection halo, and actions into an iframe on a phone took more layout fighting than expected.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
That moment you hover a max-shielded enemy tile, realize you cannot finish the job alone, and open the comments instead of rage-quitting.
We shipped a real daily loop: Capitals, midnight reset, War Room wins, and AP that comes back across the day. A UI that looks like PlayHue, not a generic game template. Seasonal Destiny with history that still feels personal. Profile hooks that invite sharing. And a path from “curious in the feed” to a first move without a lecture.
Small but important: when a move is illegal, the game just says why. No mystery. No silent dead button.
What we learned
On Reddit, the comment thread can be the best multiplayer feature you never have to build. Rate limits turn chat into strategy.
Scarcity creates drama. Fewer moves made the game more social, not less.
A day needs an ending (winner + reset). A week needs an arc (Season + War Room). First-session UX is the product: fancy retention does nothing if players don’t understand AP and adjacency in the first two minutes.
Polish is not fluff either. Selection feedback, disabled-move reasons, and tactile tiles are what make a grid feel like a game instead of a spreadsheet.
What's next for PlayHue
Deeper Trophy Room achievements and more shareable end-of-day moments. Richer War Room storytelling: comeback days, clutch claims, the tile everyone fought over. Better mod tools for pinned battlegrounds and season ceremonies. Light seasonal events that stay true to the Japandi look.
Mostly, keep playtesting with r/PlayHue and let the meta surprise us. The point was never “I alone own the map.” It was always: spend a few AP with your hue, argue in the comments, then come back tomorrow when the canvas is blank again.
Paint it together.
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