Updoot Tower

Snoo must make his way up the Updoot Tower. A fun way of fighting for the leaderboards in a game that has a nice learning curve.

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Inspiration

Having been a Reddit user for almost a decade I was excited to learn about the Devvit platform and how to deploy a game on it. I also wanted to push my self to make a game on my own but wanted to start small (it's my first game ever!). As a full-stack web developer I also thought it was a good idea to use this as a way to learn new frameworks (Godot & Devvit) as well as taking part in my first Hackathon!

Note: I also feel that Reddit needs a game that captures some of the Reddit lore 🤓

What it does

The game is a vertical platform jumper, inspired by the classic Icy Tower, featuring our beloved Snoo, customized to our player's look preferences, and his way up the Updoot Tower. The game has a funny meme like atmosphere (sounds & awards) and a competitive learning curve that should challenge the player to hopefully battle for the top spots in the leaderboard.

How I built it

I enjoy programming and building all kinds of things, even with the little free time I have, since I have a full time job and two kids, which is why I had Claude Code help me with the project. Claude helped me with the GDScript syntax and planning features with me, which ultimately helped me release my game in time. The game is built in Godot version 4.4.1, and the reddit side was built with React + Vite in Visual Studio Code.

Challenges I ran into

  • Making the scheduling post flow: post created, old post archived, user flairs granted for top spots.
  • Making the scoring/physics system consistent and competitive.
  • Getting particle effects to work as well as perform well.
  • Learning to use the TilSet/TileMapLayer for tiling the platform textures.
  • Creating the platform textures with various AI image tools (ChatGPT, Grok, Gemini)
  • Minifying the game files such as game sounds, WASM files, etc.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I'm happy with how the textures/sprites turned out and also all of the backend logic with fetching leaderboards, snoovatars, scheduling and working with the reddit API. I'm also just very proud of actually making it to my first game release!

What I learned

  • No Zero days! Doing something every day, even if it's just a little, keeps your head in it and makes you more likely to finish the project ❤️
  • The last 5% really DO take a lot of time and effort.
  • That making games with Godot is nice! Especially with the help of AI agents.
  • Regarding LLMs it is probably best to use some kind of a spec to make features, since the LLM tends to misunderstand if it doesn't have the full context.

What's next for Updoot Tower

I feel there are a lot of possibilities with Updoot Tower. I have a long list of personal features I would like to implement in the future but these are some that come to mind:

  • In-game purchases: new characters, powerups, items, etc.
  • More platform textures and different "platform abilities" such as sliding, bouncing, etc.
  • Adding NPCs / enemies (making the game harder in further levels)
  • Support the developer (with Reddit gold) I will also be putting up a "Feature Requests" post so users can request some features they want to see in the game!

Hope you like it!

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