💡 Inspiration

Reddit’s comment section is more than discussion—it’s strategy. Timing, tone, and phrasing often matter more than what’s actually said. Comment Heist was inspired by watching how karma is subtly “earned” (or farmed) through clever edits, replies, and posting at the right moment. We wanted to turn that unspoken meta-game into an explicit, playful daily challenge.

🧠 What We Learned

Building Comment Heist taught us how powerful platform-native mechanics can be. Instead of forcing traditional game loops, we leaned into Reddit’s natural behaviors—voting, replying, suspicion, and public callouts. We also learned how daily constraints (one move per day) dramatically improve strategy, fairness, and replayability.

🛠️ How We Built It

The game is built using Devvit Web with a mobile-first React interface.

Each day:

A seeded Reddit thread is generated

Players are allowed exactly one action (edit, reply, rephrase, or timed post)

Karma is simulated, not real, and tracked per user

A hidden suspicion score is calculated based on behavior patterns

The core logic balances reward and risk using a simple scoring model:

Heist Score

Karma Gained − Suspicion Penalty Heist Score=Karma Gained−Suspicion Penalty

Community members can flag suspicious moves, making detection player-driven rather than automated. The comment section itself becomes the primary gameplay surface.

⚔️ Challenges We Faced

The biggest challenge was designing a system that feels fair without revealing too much. Showing exact suspicion values would make the game solvable, while hiding everything would feel arbitrary. We solved this by keeping suspicion invisible but signaling outcomes through verdicts and badges.

Another challenge was ensuring the game remained lightweight and intuitive—judges and players should understand it within seconds just by reading the comments. This pushed us to prioritize clarity, minimal UI, and strong in-thread explanations.

🚀 Final Thoughts

Comment Heist transforms Reddit’s everyday behavior into a daily stealth puzzle—where subtlety wins, greed gets punished, and the community decides who got away clean.

Built With

• and-suspicion-scores)-game-&-ui-tools:-gamemaker-(used-for-animations
• apis
• daily-state
• devvit
• feedback-effects
• gamemaker
• git
• github
• javascript
• javascript-frameworks-&-libraries:-react-(for-building-the-interactive
• karma
• mobile-first-ui)-devvit-web-(for-reddit-native-app-development)-platforms:-reddit-developer-platform-(devvit)-reddit-interactive-posts-apis-&-services:-devvit-apis-(user-identity
• post-context
• react
• scheduled-jobs)-reddit-voting-and-comment-interaction-apis-(simulated-for-gameplay)-databases-&-storage:-devvit-key-value-storage-(for-user-actions
• storage
• typescript