Inspiration
Often on apps I would get to the end of the page whether reading or doing something else, and I could keep scrolling the content up until it was completely hidden above the header. And each time it would get harder and harder with diminishing returns. And I thought it would be fun to take that mechanic and turn it into a game.
What it does
You scroll down, maintaining connection with the screen as to not lose your place. Each scroll gives you points. You can open gates for a mini game or collect letters for boosts.
How we built it
It's built on Devvit Web with React and TypeScript. The core mechanic is just raw pointer events and a custom physics hook: resistance is 1 / (1 + k * distance), so every swipe moves you less than the last one. All the leaderboards, streaks, badges, the daily word queue is Redis on the server side, and the Void Clash multiplayer mode runs on Devvit's realtime channels. Even the audio is procedural Web Audio (the ambient drone is four sine voices breathing on their own slow LFOs), so the whole game ships with basically no assets. I used Claude Code as my dev partner and iterated through a lot of playtest-and-fix rounds to get the feel right.
Challenges we ran into
The touch model was the hardest part. Early on you could cheat by planting one finger and pumping with the other, so I had to build an "active pointer" system where only the first touch drives and you have to actually lift it before the next finger can take over. Alternating-fingers rhythm ended up being the whole feel of the game. The checkpoint mini-game got redesigned several times before it felt like it belonged (it now reuses the same swipe-against-resistance mechanic as the main game). And there were a bunch of "lost my progress to a stray tap" bugs after mini-games that took real effort to hunt down.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
The resistance curve genuinely feels like the thing that inspired it.
What we learned
the physics constants changed dozens of times and every "small" tuning pass changed how the game felt more than any feature did.
What's next for Void Scroll: A doomscroll game
Server-side anti-cheat hardening for the leaderboard, a cleaner home screen, and deeper daily variety. Somthing to hook people and bring them back.
Built With
- css
- devvit
- hono
- html5
- javascript
- node.js
- react
- redis
- tailwind
- typescript
- vite
- websockets
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