Taara

Taara is a nightly reddit constellation ritual: connect stars, reveal a bedtime story, and share a spoiler-safe sky card with the community. sleep tight and come back to play again tomorrow!

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Inspiration

I've always loved the stars.

Last year, I drove to Dover, Arkansas, one of the darkest skies in the United States, and for the first time saw what the night sky looks like without light pollution. There were countless stars and even a few shooting stars. It completely changed how I looked at the sky.

The funny part? I could barely name anything beyond Orion. I kept wondering how ancient civilizations recognized constellations, navigated oceans, and built stories around the stars (even moana came to mind!).

I work in XR, and one thing I've learned is that people understand and remember things best when they experience them instead of memorizing them. Rather than reading about constellations, what if you could discover them yourself?

That's where TaaraNight came from.

Taara means "star" in Telugu, my mother tongue. My dream is simple: help people learn the real night sky one constellation at a time, inspire them to step outside and go stargazing, and maybe even make them think a little more about preserving dark skies and reducing light pollution.

What it does

TaaraNight is a cozy nightly constellation puzzle built for Reddit.

Every evening at 6:00 PM PT, one shared puzzle unlocks for the entire community. Everyone receives the exact same sky.

Your goal is to connect the stars to reveal one of the 88 officially recognized constellations. Once completed, the constellation gently comes alive with subtle animations, its name is revealed, and an original bedtime story unlocks in both English and Telugu.

The difficulty naturally follows the week:

  • 🌙 Monday - Easy
  • ✨ Tuesday–Saturday - Progressively harder
  • 🌌 Sunday - The most challenging puzzle
  • 🔄 Then the cycle begins again.

Each night has a shared leaderboard where players compete for the fastest solve while remaining transparent about whether they used Whispers (hints) or touched Glitches (decoy stars). A perfect run simply displays the completion time.

Every constellation you solve is permanently added to My Sky a pannable, north-up star chart that gradually fills with the real night sky. Complete all 88 constellations, and you'll have built your own celestial map.

Players can also maintain their Jwala streak and share spoiler-free result cards without revealing the constellation to others.

How I built it

TaaraNight is built as a Reddit Devvit Web App using Phaser, TypeScript, Hono, and Devvit Redis, with no external backend.

The astronomy is grounded in real data. Star positions come from the HYG Database, star names are validated using the IAU Catalog of Star Names, and constellation figures are projected so they closely resemble their appearance in the real night sky.

The nightly puzzle is deterministic, meaning everyone receives the same constellation each night while previous Reddit posts always preserve their original puzzle.

All artwork is either procedural or based on my own photography. Every bedtime story is original, with ideas, drafting, and refinement assisted by GPT-5.5, while the final stories were curated and edited by me.

Challenges I ran into

The biggest challenge was making real astronomy feel approachable.

Working with all 88 official constellations meant balancing astronomical accuracy with enjoyable gameplay. Star layouts that are accurate in the sky aren't always comfortable to play on a phone, so I spent a lot of time refining projections, spacing, and interactions until each constellation still looked authentic while remaining fun.

The second challenge was learning to remove features instead of adding them.

The game went through several redesigns before arriving at its current philosophy:

One sky. One puzzle. One story. Every night.

Keeping the experience simple ultimately made it stronger.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I'm proud that TaaraNight teaches real astronomy without feeling educational. It combines:

  • 🌌 88 real constellations
  • 📖 88 original bedtime stories
  • 🎙️ Original narrated audio
  • 🌙 One shared nightly Reddit puzzle
  • 🏆 Community leaderboards
  • ⭐ Long-term collection and streak progression

More than anything, I hope it becomes a relaxing nightly ritual that encourages people to look up at the real night sky.

What's next for TaaraNight?

I'd love to continue growing TaaraNight beyond the hackathon. Some features I'd like to add include:

  • 📱 An AR companion that helps players locate constellations in the real night sky.
  • 🎧 Richer narrated bedtime stories with audiobook-quality narration.
  • 🌠 Community milestones where players collectively unlock celestial events.
  • 🏆 Reddit flair and long-term seasonal streak rewards.
  • ✨ Creator Mode: after completing all 88 official constellations, players can create their own constellations, write original stories, and submit them to the community. The highest-voted creations become future weekly puzzles that everyone solves together.

Ultimately, my goal isn't just to build another daily game.

I want TaaraNight to become a small nightly ritual that encourages people to pause, look up, reconnect with the night sky, and rediscover a little sense of wonder before going to sleep.

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