-
-
575: Daily word game for December 9, 2024
-
575: Poem posted as comment
575 is a daily word game where you use the words-of-the-day to compose a poem in the format of a 5-7-5 haiku. Try it out at r/575game.
Inspiration
My inspiration are those poetry fridge magnets you combine to create unique messages. Using these magnets, you can make poetry simply by selecting and arranging individual words. This was a great fit for this challenge, since it involves bite-sized interactions suited for Reddit, while still being expressive and replayable.
I settled on the 5-7-5 format of Japanese haikus to give the game some constraints and put a ceiling on playtime.
The idea of having the word bank change daily came from popular word games like Wordle and Spelling Bee which give players a reason to keep coming back.
What it does
Each day, a new set of words is posted. Players can add any words from this word bank to their poem. However, your poem is limited to 3 lines with 5, 7, and 7 syllables respectively. The challenge is to pen something beautiful or funny or witty within this limit.
After you've finalized your poem, give it a witty title and post it as a comment in the thread. Other redditors can view your creation, upvote, and critique it.
How we built it
I started with the Devvit boilerplate, opting for the web view since I'm most comfortable with web stacks. I spent a lot of time looking over the documentation and example apps to get a better grasp on how the APIs worked.
Challenges we ran into
Designing for the limited viewport space was a challenge, particularly when dealing with a word bank of 100 words.
Likewise designing a complete game with only clicks, since more advanced gestures like dragging aren't well-supported yet, but the click-only approach turned out to mesh with this game concept.
Stylistically, getting 575 to look good in both light and dark mode, since as far as I could tell there is no API to detect it with web views, also required a lot of iteration.
Finally, a uniquely fun challenge of this project was designing for Reddit, where you have to design a social game that's short and sweet but keeps its entertainment value.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
I'm proud of submitting a feature-complete game that gives people an outlet to express their own creativity.
What we learned
This was my first foray into developing for Reddit. I was surprised how extensive the APIs and documentation are. I hope to see many more projects built on Devvit in the future.
What's next for 575
The plan is to continue posting daily on r/575game. I'd like to introduce themed days, for example holiday words this time of year, or silly or provocative themes for other occasions.
Iterating on the design based on Redditor feedback. Keep refining the word bank to find a balance of fun usable words.
Lastly, it would be great to add 575 to an established subreddit like r/Poetry as a weekly challenge.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.