Real or Render

Ever wonder how good you are at spotting AI-generated images? Each day, you get 10 rounds to pick the real image from a pair. It’s a fun, quick challenge, but surprisingly tricky 🚀

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Inspiration

We were inspired by two main trends: the rise of "Real or AI" photo challenges and the massive popularity of daily games like Wordle. We found that most existing "real or AI" games were too short and not challenging enough. We wanted to combine these concepts to create the definitive, most engaging version of a "real or render" daily challenge, complete with scoring and a competitive leaderboard.

What it does

Real or Render is a daily game where players face 10 rounds, trying to distinguish between a real photograph and an AI-generated image.

  • Gameplay: Players can hover to zoom (on web) or hold & drag (on the Mobile Browser) or hold (on Reddit app) to inspect the images closely using magnifier before clicking their choice for the "REAL" photo.
  • Scoring & Leaderboard: A global leaderboard ranks all players based on two factors: the number of correct answers and the total time taken.
  • Anti-Cheating: Every player gets the same 10 image pairs each day, but the order of the rounds and the left/right position of the images are randomized for every game to make cheating difficult.
  • Transparency: After finishing, players see their final score and rank. They can also view the "Photo Sources" to see the original, real photos. We exclusively use Pexels, which has a clear anti-AI content policy, ensuring our "real" images are authentic.
  • Community Sharing: From the results screen, players can post their score directly to the comment section. To keep the competition fair, only the first game score of the day counts towards the leaderboard and is eligible for sharing. Replays are allowed but will not be recorded.

How we built it

We built the game using the Devvit (React) template, which was very easy to get started with. We already had an existing web version of this game, so we brought in our existing styles and components as a baseline.

This is where Kiro became essential to our workflow and developer experience:

  1. We first used Planning Mode to describe our core game features (like the daily logic, 10-round system, and leaderboard scoring). Kiro generated a great functional starting point, but the styling didn't match our vision.
  2. We then used the Vibe Code feature. We pointed Kiro at our existing style folders and components and asked it to adapt the new Devvit code to "vibe" with our established design language. It worked like a charm, perfectly matching our styles with only minor adjustments to margins and padding needed from us.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into two major, distinct challenges during development: one a platform limitation we had to design around, and the other a set of cross-platform data bugs.

1. Turning a Static Splash Screen into an Engaging Hook

Our first challenge was deciding between a normal app and the inline (beta) experience. We chose inline for a much better player experience, but this created a new problem: the splash screen (backgroundURI) is just a static image. We tried designing three different static images, but none felt engaging enough to "hook" a scrolling user.

Our Solution: We built a fully custom splash screen inside the app itself. To prevent Reddit's default tiled background from flashing on load, we set the app's backgroundURI to a transparent PNG. This tricks the client into showing no background, allowing our custom screen to be the first thing the user sees. Our challenge then shifted to designing an eye-catching splash screen that felt native to the experience.

2. Handling Cross-Platform Data Inconsistencies

Our second major challenge was that the Reddit mobile apps on Android and iOS behaved differently, specifically with postData.

  • On Android: We discovered that on a specific version (e.g., 2025.30.0), the postData would arrive as undefined. We attempted to build a refetching mechanism from our API, but it was unsuccessful. As a graceful fallback, we now detect this state and show a message: Please update your Reddit app to the latest version... to prevent a crash.
  • On iOS: The postData was present, but it was nested inside an extra developerData key, which broke our app.

Our Solution: We fixed the iOS issue and made our app more robust by checking for both data structures. We now access our data using: const postData = context?.postData?.developerData ?? context?.postData ?? {}; This line safely handles the iOS nested structure while still working for the standard web/Android versions that have the data.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're incredibly proud of finishing the project so much faster than we anticipated, and we have Kiro to thank for that. The "Vibe Code" feature was a true game-changer for integrating our design and saving us days of work.

We're also proud of the app's final polish and performance. It feels smooth, responsive, and achieved a 93 on our Lighthouse performance test, which is fantastic for a game running inside a webview. Finally, we're very proud of our clever workaround for the inline splash screen.

What we learned

We learned that building games on Devvit is incredibly fun and rewarding. The positive feedback, comments, and high player count we received after cross-posting to Reddit's gaming communities were extremely motivating.

Technically, we learned a clever solution for the inline post's static splash screen. Most importantly, our experience with Kiro showed us how much faster we can develop. It made us feel like "nothing is impossible" and has completely changed our perspective on meeting tight deadlines.

What's next for Real or Render

We have a lot of ideas for the future! Our top priorities are adding more community and engagement features like daily streaks and achievements.

Our biggest planned feature is to build a user-submission system. We want to let users upload their own real photos, which we can then use to create AI-generated counterparts for future challenges. We would, of course, give a shout-out to the original photographer in the game. This will require building a robust validation pipeline to ensure all submitted images are genuine.

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