Trash Bandits

Inspiration

I wanted to build a game that could only exist on Reddit. Instead of real-time multiplayer, I embraced Reddit's asynchronous nature: players build stashes that continue defending themselves while they're away. When they return, they discover who raided them, what was stolen, and can immediately seek revenge. I also wanted the community to create the content, so every raidable stash is built by another player, making each raid feel unique and personal.

What it does

Trash Bandits is an asynchronous heist game for Reddit. You are a raccoon. You hoard shinies ✨ in a stash you design yourself — walls, snap traps, tripwires, guard pugs — and while you're away, other redditors break in and try to rob you. Meanwhile, you break into theirs, in real-time arcade stealth gameplay.

Every level in the game is built by a real player. Every raid has a victim who will come back, read the raid report, and want revenge.

The hook

The core loop is engineered around one question: "what happened to my stash while I was gone?"

Overnight raid reports — open the post and the first thing you see is who broke in, what your pug caught (+bounty!), what was stolen, and the calling card the thief left on your doorstep.
Revenge raids — every raid against you is a one-tap revenge target. Rivalries fuel return visits and comment-thread trash talk.
Daily Heist — one shared stash, one attempt per player per day, a fresh leaderboard every night. Yesterday's best-defending player's stash becomes today's heist — getting your defense featured is a flex.
Streaks — daily check-in bonus that grows for 7 days, and a raid-earnings multiplier that grows for 10. Missing a day hurts (gently).
Defense economy — your stash earns while you sleep: catching a raider pays a bounty and a trophy. You don't need to be online to win.
Trophy unlocks — tripwires at 3 🏆, decoys at 8 🏆, a third guard pug at 15 🏆. Progression you can feel in the editor.
Scheduled daily posts — a cron task drops "🌙 Tonight's Heist" into the subreddit feed every day, so the game knocks on the community's door, not just the other way around.

How it plays

Raid (offense): pick a mark — matchmade by wealth bracket, revenge targets first. Sneak through their stash in real time: grab shiny piles, crack the vault (hold still — 60% of the pot, but it triggers the alarm), and get back to the door before a pug chomps you. Caught = you drop everything and pay the defender a bounty.
Fortify (defense): a full level editor with a scrap budget. Walls shape the maze; traps stun; tripwires alert every dog; decoys waste raider time. Server-side validation guarantees every stash is beatable (a path must exist from door to vault and every pile) — no degenerate turtling.
Economy: raids stake ~20% of a defender's hoard, but the gold floor (150 ✨) means nobody is ever wiped out. Bots with regenerating hoards guarantee day-one raid targets on a fresh install.

How we built it

Delightful UX
Night-heist theme with hand-made procedural pixel art (zero downloaded assets), juicy buttons, coin-flurry feedback, synth SFX (WebAudio, zero audio files), one-thumb controls (hold/drag to move) that also work with WASD.

Polish
Server-authoritative economy, rate limits, plausibility checks on raid results, graceful logged-out spectator mode, cold-start bot dens, loss protection, empty-state copy everywhere.

Reddit-y
You rob actual community members by username. Per-subreddit world (installation-scoped Redis), community pulse feed, calling cards, revenge, daily posts in the feed.

Hook-y Raid reports, revenge, one-shot daily with crown, streaks, defense that plays while you're away — see "The hook" above.

Phaser The raid is a real-time Phaser arcade-physics stealth game (patrol/chase AI, cycling traps, alert propagation); the stash editor and all UI are Phaser scenes; every texture is generated at boot from pixel maps via canvas textures.

Retention Mechanics Daily Heist (one attempt), escalating streak bonuses, scheduled daily posts, overnight defense earnings. User Contributions Every raidable level is player-built; the Daily Heist itself is promoted player content, credited to its builder.

Tech

Devvit Web (@devvit/web) — post entrypoints (splash.html inline, game.html expanded), Hono server, Redis, scheduler, menu actions, install trigger.
Phaser for all client rendering & physics; Vite build; TypeScript end-to-end with shared types + shared game rules (src/shared) so client and server validate identically.
No external assets: art is code (pixel-map sprites), sound is code (WebAudio synth). Instant boot, no CSP concerns.

Challenges we ran into

Balancing "Fortify", fitting all the UI together, not getting chomped while making screenshots

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Making it work and being fun to play!

What we learned

We learned that designing for Reddit is different from designing for traditional games. Players don't need long sessions—they need compelling reasons to come back. We also gained valuable experience building with Devvit Web, integrating Phaser, sharing game logic between client and server, and designing secure asynchronous multiplayer systems.