Word Maestro

A highly addictive global multiplayer word-finding game inspired by Wordle and Scrabble!

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Inspiration

Word games have always been a social experience — from Scrabble nights with family to quick rounds of word puzzles on your phone. But what if you could play a fast-paced word game live with every Redditor who opens the same post? That's the spark behind Word Maestro: a real-time multiplayer word game that turns any Reddit post into a competitive arena.

I wanted to build something that felt native to Reddit — low friction, instantly playable, and inherently social. No downloads, no sign-ups. Just open the post and you're in.

What it does

Word Maestro runs on an 80-second synchronized game cycle:

  1. Lobby (10s) — Players gather. A radial countdown shows when the next round starts.
  2. Game (60s) — A 4×4 grid of letter tiles appears. Tap tiles to form words, submit them for points. Longer words earn multiplied scores. A live leaderboard shows who's winning.
  3. End Screen (10s) — Final standings, personal stats (longest word, best score), and a countdown to the next round.

Every player in the world who opens any Word Maestro post plays the same round with the same letters — it's one global session. Scores accumulate into an all-time global leaderboard that's auto-posted as a pinned comment on the game post.

Key Features

  • Real-time multiplayer — All players share the same game cycle via Devvit Realtime
  • Global leaderboard — All-time cumulative scores, auto-updated every minute as a pinned Reddit comment
  • Sound & music system — Background music, countdown timers, and satisfying sound effects for valid words, streaks (3+ words in 8 seconds), and big words (6+ letters)
  • Responsive design — Adapts from desktop Reddit posts to mobile portrait views
  • Dictionary validation — 80,000+ word dictionary for real-time word checking
  • Smart letter generation — Guarantees 5 vowels + 11 consonants for fair, playable grids
  • Scrabble-style scoring — Each letter has a point value, with multipliers for longer words

How we built it

The game is built entirely on the Devvit platform:

  • Server-side Devvit custom post type with useInterval for the tick-based game loop, useChannel for real-time broadcasts, and Redis for all state management (game cycles, scores, player tracking, global leaderboard)
  • Client-side (webview): Vanilla HTML/CSS/JS with a custom MultiplayerHelper class that handles bidirectional communication with the Devvit server via postMessage
  • Audio: File-based audio system with 7 sound effects + background music + a 60-second countdown timer that dynamically ramps in volume
  • Leaderboard comment: A Devvit.addSchedulerJob cron job runs every minute, reads the global leaderboard from Redis, formats it as a markdown table, and edits the pinned comment

The architecture ensures one global game session — every post, repost, or share connects to the same Redis-backed game cycle. There's no per-post isolation.

Challenges we ran into

  1. Real-time synchronization — Keeping all players perfectly in sync across the 80-second cycle required careful use of server-authoritative timestamps rather than client-side timers
  2. Webview ↔ Devvit communication — The message passing between the webview iframe and the Devvit server required careful handling of message formats and race conditions during initialization
  3. Responsive layout in Devvit — The webview runs inside a Devvit post with constrained dimensions. Making the game look great on both desktop (wide landscape) and mobile (narrow portrait) required precise CSS media queries
  4. Race conditions in word submission — Preventing duplicate word submissions and score inflation required server-side deduplication with Redis sorted sets
  5. Audio in webview — Browser autoplay policies and mobile sleep/wake events required careful audio lifecycle management with pause/resume handlers

Accomplishments that we're proud of

What we learned

  • Devvit's Redis + Realtime combination is incredibly powerful for building shared-state multiplayer experiences
  • Server-authoritative game loops (tick-based with useInterval) are essential for fair multiplayer
  • The simplicity of "open a post and play" creates a uniquely Reddit-native gaming experience ## What's next for Word Maestro
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