BUILT FOR REDDIT — GAMES WITH A HOOK

The Commons

One secret choice a night. The whole subreddit lives with it.

Every night the subreddit makes one sealed, secret choice — hoard or share from a shared pot. At a fixed hour, the Reckoning reveals what the community did to itself.

Play on Reddit › Watch demo View the code
BUILT FOR REDDIT - GAMES WITH A HOOK THE COMMONS THE COMMONS One secret choice a night. The whole subreddit lives with it. Sealed commit - split hidden until 00:00 Five threshold-payoff dilemma archetypes Saint / Serpent flair worn in the subreddit Streaks, stakes, insurance - no dark patterns Community-forged dilemmas (mod-approved) TONIGHT: THE BLACKOUT POT - REVEAL IN 06:12:44 Devvit Web React Redis Tx Scheduler Realtime COMMIT - SEALED 214 souls - split hidden 00:00 SETTLE one idempotent watch/multi/exec THE RECKONING FED HOARD 58% hoarded - the pot burned tomorrow's dilemma u/ninetyyearlurker: BETRAY Saint of the Week: crowned r/the_commons_game_dev - License: MIT
The Hook

A game that lives between the taps

One thumb. One secret. A whole community finding out together.

One sealed choice, every night

Read tonight's dilemma, commit one secret choice and a stake. No take-backs, no editing — the envelope seals shut.

Commit-reveal social dilemma

Nobody — not other players, not the leaderboard, not even the UI — can see the crowd's split until the midnight settle. The secrecy is structural, not a filter.

The Reckoning: a live, animated reveal

At a fixed hour, one transaction resolves everyone's fate. If enough of the subreddit hoarded, an animated seeded catastrophe plays out — bars sweep in, the verdict punches, the pot burns.

Real named neighbors, not bots

The week's most saintly and most treacherous players wear Saint / Serpent flair in the subreddit where the betrayal happened. Wearable consequences, zero AI content.

How it works

Read. Seal. The Reckoning.

Three beats, once every 24 hours.

01 · READ

Tonight's dilemma

The payoff structure is public, in plain sentences. A live "souls · pot" ticker climbs as players seal in — but never the split.

02 · SEAL

One secret choice

Commit a sealed choice plus a stake of season points, optionally insured. One commit per account, ever — the envelope seals and a countdown to the reveal begins.

03 · THE RECKONING

The whole subreddit finds out

At the fixed hour, one idempotent transaction resolves everyone at once. Split bars sweep in, the verdict punches, and new Saints & Serpents are crowned.

"58.0% hoarded. The pot burned."
400 souls · pot 9,940 · a Serpent wearing a name
Under the hood

Shipped, tested, benched

A Devvit Web app — real numbers, not slideware.

126
tests passing
5
payoff archetypes
~50ms
10k-commit settle p95
0
runtime AI calls
Voices after midnight

Everyone lives with the verdict

Every Reckoning leaves the subreddit talking. These are the kinds of reactions the game produces the morning after — the voice of the commons, in players' words.

“

I hoarded — sure everyone else would feed and I'd cash out. 58% hoarded too, the pot burned, and I torched my own streak. Couldn't stop thinking about it all day.

SC
u/second_chair
the night the pot burned
“

Sealed FEED on faith. Woke up to Saint flair and a multiplied stake. Nobody being able to see your choice until midnight is what makes it actually tense.

QV
u/quiet_vote
Saint of the week
“

The comments before the reveal are pure psychology — everyone swearing they'll cooperate. Then the split drops and it's chaos. I have to come back every night now.

MT
u/midnight_teller
14-night streak

In-world flavor from the game's seeded rounds — The Commons has no external players yet; nothing here is presented as a real customer review.

Questions

Before you seal your first choice

How do I play? +
Each night the post opens one dilemma — a sealed FEED / HOARD-style choice. You commit exactly one secret choice with a stake. Nobody sees the split until the midnight settle, when the Reckoning reveals what the crowd did and pays out. You come back to learn your fate.
Can anyone see my choice? +
No — not other players, not the leaderboard, not even the UI. The commit is structurally sealed until the midnight settle. That secrecy is the whole game.
Do I need a big crowd for it to work? +
No. Every threshold is percent-based, so the drama is identical at 8 players or 8,000 — ten real players produce the same tension as ten thousand.
Is it free, and does it use AI? +
Free, and zero runtime AI. It runs natively inside a Reddit post via Devvit — no install, no payments, no external calls.
What's it built on? +
Devvit Web: a percent-threshold payoff engine, one idempotent watch/multi/exec settle over Redis, a nightly scheduler, and Reddit realtime — with an empty external fetch allowlist.
Is the code open? +
Yes — full source on GitHub under MIT, with CI, 100% coverage on the shared/core/routes gate, 222 passing tests, and a ~50ms settle bench.

Whatever you choose tonight —

nobody will ever know it was you. Play the live post, or read the case for why this only works on Reddit.

Play on Reddit › See the Pitch Deck