Splurgatory

Splurgatory is where you create your own budget challenges or play everyone else's. Pick what to spend on within the budget, then see how your picks compare to the community.

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Inspiration

I kept seeing those "you have $15, build your team" posts float around Reddit. They always blow up in the comments, everyone argues over who's worth what. But it was all just text. There was no actual game, no way to lock in your picks, and no way to see if the rest of the sub agreed with you. I wanted to turn that comment-section energy into something you could actually play, right inside the post.

What it does

Splurgatory is a budget-pick game that lives inside a Reddit post. You create your own budget challenge, or play everyone else's: pick what to spend on within the budget, lock it in, and instantly see how your build compares to the whole community.

  • Create challenges in a grid or a blind, question-by-question format
  • Spend a set budget across your picks
  • See how popular, rare, or spot-on your build is after you lock in
  • Justify your build in a comment, and read why others made their picks
  • Browse the most popular builds and per-option pick rates
  • Earn coins, climb a leaderboard, and show your rank and plays on your flair
  • Style your challenge with theme presets that restyle the whole play screen

How I built it

It's a Devvit Web app: React 19 and Tailwind CSS 4 on the client (running in the post's iframe), a Hono server on Devvit's serverless runtime, and Devvit-managed Redis for all the state (challenges, builds, pick counts, coins, leaderboard). Everything is TypeScript end to end with a shared types layer so the client and server never drift.

Builds are stored as order-independent signatures so two people who pick the same options hash to the same key, which is what powers the "twins," rank, and popularity math. Themes are done with a single CSS-variable override so one swap recolors every button, price, and accent on the screen at once

Challenges I ran into

Making the game flexible without cluttering it. My goal was that whatever a creator pictures in their head, they should be able to build it. That meant the engine had to be general: grids or blind question-by-question play, prices down the side or across the top, "pick one per row" or "pick N total," text options or image ones. The hard part was giving people all that range without drowning them in it. Every option I added to the creator was a chance to make the screen busier and scarier, so a lot of the work was hiding that flexibility behind sensible defaults and a clean layout, so it feels simple to make a challenge even though there's a lot going on underneath.

Making a post that invites people in. An interactive post competes with everything else in a busy Reddit feed, so it has to earn the first tap before anyone plays anything. That pushed a lot of work into presentation. Theme presets let a creator give their challenge a real look, restyling the whole play screen with one pick. Titles are big, bold, and animated so the post reads as a game the moment it loads, not a wall of text. And small touches of motion do the nudging: a light arc traces the option borders before you've picked anything, quietly saying "these are tappable, go on." The aim was for the post itself to feel alive and obviously playable, so interacting is the natural first instinct instead of scrolling past.

Getting people to do more than play once. Playing a challenge is easy to get someone to do. The real challenge was nudging them toward the things that actually grow the game: coming back, leaving a comment, and creating their own challenge. So I leaned on gentle incentives instead of nagging. You earn coins for building, commenting, and joining, those coins feed a community leaderboard, and your rank and total plays show up on your flair, so climbing and participating are both visible and worth chasing. The reveal screen ends on "see how you compare" and a prompt to create your own, right when you're most invested. Commenting doubles as debate fuel, since your build attaches to the comment and you can read everyone else's reasoning.

Accomplishments that I am proud of

A little over a week since launch, the subreddit has passed 100 members and more than 2,000 people have played. Honestly did not expect it to move that fast.

The numbers are nice, but the part I am actually proud of is what people are doing with it. Redditors are posting their own challenges, and many are taking the time in the comments to explain and defend their picks. Getting people to care enough to do that was the whole idea, so seeing it happen for real makes the work feel worth it.

What I learned

This was my first time building on Devvit, so I picked up the whole ecosystem from scratch: interactive posts, the client-and-server split, Redis for state, user versus app permissions, and all the quirks that come with running inside a Reddit post.

Beyond the code, I learned a lot about the softer side. Figuring out how to actually drive engagement, the small nudges and rewards that get someone to comment or make their own challenge instead of just playing once. And starting a subreddit from zero taught me that building the game is only half of it. Getting people in the door and giving them a reason to stick around is its own kind of work.

What's next for Splurgatory

  • More challenge formats, so creators have even more ways to build what's in their head
  • Featured and seasonal challenges to keep the front page fresh and give people a reason to check back
  • Growing the community, bringing on moderators, and helping more people make challenges of their own

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