The Daily Suspect

A daily murder mystery your whole subreddit solves together, examine the scene, name the killer, argue it out in the comments, and find out at midnight if the community cracked the case.

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Inspiration

Daily games like Wordle proved people love a shared ritual — but everyone solves Wordle alone and just compares scores. Reddit's superpower is the comment section, so we wanted a daily game where the discussion is the game. A murder mystery is perfect for it: clues to argue over, suspects to defend, and a single satisfying reveal that the community either earns or doesn't, together.

What it does

Every day a new case appears as an Interactive Post — a hand-written whodunit rendered as a pixel crime scene in Phaser.

  • Examine the scene. Click numbered evidence placards to uncover clues. You see how many other detectives found each clue.
  • Name your suspect. Pick from the lineup. Your vote is final — one per case.
  • Argue your case. Post a theory; it becomes a real comment on the post. Upvotes decide whose theory leads.
  • No spoilers until the reset. The answer stays hidden while the case is open — no spoilers. A countdown ticks down to the reveal.
  • The daily verdict. At reset the case closes and the game posts the solution, how accurate the community was, and features the top-upvoted theory. Then a fresh case opens.
  • Detective Rank. Solve cases correctly over time to climb from Rookie to Legendary Sleuth.

Every case is a fair-play puzzle with a deliberate trap: the obvious suspect is always cleared by a detail you have to combine clues to spot (a timing contradiction, a broken "locked-room" assumption, a forged signature).

How we built it

  • Devvit Web (Reddit's app platform) with a Hono server and Reddit's Redis + Reddit API + Scheduler plugins.
  • Phaser 4 renders each crime scene, with a different themed backdrop per case (manor, diner, theatre, sleeper train, yacht, museum).
  • Server-authoritative design: the solution never leaves the server while a case is open — the client only receives a sanitized case. Votes are locked and de-duplicated server-side. This keeps the answer un-scrapeable and the comment debate honest.
  • The comment section is the multiplayer layer — no custom netcode. Reddit's native comments and upvotes carry the social game; a scheduled job runs the daily reset and posts each verdict.
  • No LLM at runtime. Every clue and resolution is hand-written and string-templated — a deliberate choice for predictable, safe public output and zero prompt-injection surface.

Challenges we ran into

  • Keeping the mystery a real debate: the first version revealed the answer the moment you voted, which killed the comment discussion and let anyone spoil it. We reworked it so the solution is withheld until the daily reset.
  • Designing cases that are hard but fair — every twist had to be solvable from the clues, not a gotcha.
  • Learning Devvit's permission model (Redis and "post as user" both need explicit grants) and its scheduler/trigger wiring.

What's next

  • More cases and rotating themes.
  • Richer pixel art for each scene.
  • Per-subreddit leaderboards and weekly "cold case" specials.

Note: Verdict auto-posting to comments is fully implemented but disabled during testing to preserve the spoiler-free experience for judges — the game still shows the full verdict reveal on the GameOver screen.

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