I've been making small indie games for years after trying to produce a AAA game in '09. I got real quiet after that but over the years, i've found that some of my happiest moments are when i create video games. Even the stupid silly ones.
So I just wanted to say hello to the community and glad to connect with others that like to create joy.
Hey r/wordgames — long-time lurker, built something I wanted to share.
Spell Royale is a 100-player live word battle royale. Same letter board for everyone. Spell as many valid words as you can before the clock runs out. Bottom 15% gets cut every 15 seconds until one player is left standing.
The twist: it runs natively inside Reddit posts. No app store, no download, no signup. Tap a match post and you're playing in 2 seconds.
A few things I think you'll like:
Live now in r/SpellRoyale.
If you'd want it installed on r/wordgames so matches drop here, let me know and I'll loop in the mods.
Feedback welcome — I'm in this thread for the next few hours.
— Doug (u/dkinnison)
Hey r/Devvit — first post. Spell Royale (live word battle royale, 100-player matches) just shipped to the App Directory and is running on r/SpellRoyale. A few things from the build worth sharing.
Stack: u/devvit/web 0.12.23, React 19 + Vite client, Hono + tRPC server, Redis sorted sets everywhere, Devvit realtime for match events. 178k-word dictionary built into the bundle.
Four things I learned that might save you time:
1. Pipeline your Redis. Default sequential awaits are slow.
My first version of submit-word did 5 sequential Redis calls per submit (~250ms warm path). Promise.all'd the parallel reads and writes — same ops, ~150ms now. Devvit serverless cold-start is still ~1s, but that's an infra limit. Save Redis sequentiality for actual dependencies.
2. Realtime is fire-and-forget — assume delivery gaps.
I had a "silent elimination" bug: server eliminates player, sends tick event with eliminatedNow: [userId], client refetches state. Sometimes the realtime event arrived but the next /state poll saw stale Redis. Fix: have the client optimistically update state from the event payload itself (when event.eliminatedNow.includes(me), flip yourEliminated=true locally). Don't wait for the server round-trip to confirm.
3. vw units don't respect your column clamp.
Devvit posts render in an iframe that's ~375px wide on mobile but 600–800px+ on desktop. I had --tile-size: clamp(40px, 13vw, 64px) and got chunky tiles on desktop because vw is viewport width, not container. Solution: cap the clamp at the mobile-equivalent value (50px), so desktop = mobile.
4. Cross-sub data via global Redis keys works.
Just shipped a community leaderboard — every sub running Spell Royale shows up on a global rank. The trick: Devvit's Redis is app-scoped, not sub-scoped, so any key like global:sub-wins is shared across all installs of your app. Stored subredditName on match meta at lobby creation, then zIncrBy on match end. Cross-sub competition without any cross-sub data plumbing.
What's next
Try it: r/SpellRoyale
Mods: if you run a word, puzzle, or daily-game sub and want Spell Royale installed for your community, hit me up — happy to help set it up.
Open to questions on any of the above. — Doug (u/dkinnison)
We all have ideas for new startups and new vibe code apps and Micro-SaaS, but that doesn't mean we should be pursuing all of them. I think a major question we should be asking is can we build it because the answer is yes, we should be focusing on should we build it.
I'm kicking off a new series called terrible pitch Tuesdays where we share our ideas that are good on paper but terrible realities. Here's the first entry.
I would love it if you shared yours!
We all have ideas for new startups and new vibe code apps and Micro-SaaS, but that doesn't mean we should be pursuing all of them. I think a major question we should be asking is can we build it because the answer is yes, we should be focusing on should we build it.
I'm kicking off a new series called terrible pitch Tuesdays where we share our ideas that are good on paper but terrible realities. Here's the first entry.
I would love it if you shared yours!
Been in the space for a long time and I'm just trying to give some advice.
I teach accelerators on how to pitch their startups to investors. Here are 3 of the key things I preach.
1. Investors don't like it when you read at them. So keep it concise. Sometimes I have pitch decks that are literally only animated gifs with my logo sometimes. 0 WORDS. If you can write the slide on the left, then you know way more about Chilean Exports than most, just speak to it and have them look at you, not the words. The slide on the right allows me to speak rather than read.
2. Limit the number of slides to 10 or less. If investors time is valuable (it is), give them the one thing that they value most, their time. If you are given 15 minutes to pitch, end your pitch in 5. Then spend the rest of the time on questions and tell them at the 10 minute mark you are going to give them their time back and are available if they want to continue.
3. Don't use the word "and". The word 'and' creates lists and no-one wants to listen to your checklist. Tell them a story. The South Park creators explain it best. Watch this on repeat until is sinks in. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jGBy2b86NJU
I genuinely hope this helps someone.
When I launched my last start up, I went to a start-up event and instead of attending the sessions, I rode the elevator from the lobby to the 4th floor and here is the magic, as soon as the door closed, I turned around, introduced myself and pitched my startup.
When the elevator stopped, and everyone stepped off, I stayed.
I pitched the way back down and literally did this ALL DAY. By the end, I had all sorts of contacts to investors and other founders and I bet you I was remembered by everyone at the conference vs the speakers pontificating on why they are the next Steve Jobs.
The bonus effect was I got realtime feedback and I refined my pitch to a fine point.
What hacks have you tried?
I'm so overwhelmed with 'landing page slop'. It's all the same and there are like 9000 people out here slinging their SaaS. Every landing page is the same. I'm not a dumb guy but honestly, I can't understand these pages anymore.
It's like at the agencies when the techno babel / marketing speak gets too heavy. I get the words but when you string them together, it's like they aren't saying anything at all.
Just tell me what your product solves. Spare me the fluff. I'm about to redo / nuke my landing page because after looking at like 100 of them in the past 24 hours, mine is now lost in the sea of meh.
I'm thinking I'll just have a 1 sentence, a logo, and a single image.
That's it.
We do this for investors, but we don't want to do it for our most valued investors, the customer.
Sorry, just had to see if there are others that feel this. Am I alone?
**UPDATE**
I'm adding a couple of photos to show you what I'm doing. Does this land better? The new white section takes full height. The rest of the page is mostly unchanged at this point.
Left is new 🔥
Right is old 🪦
