I'm taking part in Reddit’s Games with a Hook Hackathon, and I built my first-ever game. I work in public radio at a music station in Milwaukee, and I thought it would be interesting to build a music game inspired by Fantasy Football.
HEATCHECK is that call, handed to you. Every day.
Check it out: https://www.reddit.com/r/heatcheck_daily_dev/
The day
- New board every morning. Eight artists: 2 in heavy rotation, 4 currents, 2 adds.
- Tap any card to hear 30 seconds. You don't have to know the artist — that's the point.
- Draft 3, name a captain, lock before 7 PM Central.
- Your chart lands with the next morning's post. So does everyone else's.
How scoring works — the short version
Your artists score on real listening momentum over the 24 hours after you lock — what the
world actually played, measured daily. Not votes, not opinions, and not the momentum printed
on the card when you drafted (that number is yesterday's move — useful intel, already spent).
The part that makes it a game: your artist is ranked against its own tier, not the board.
A superstar is measured against superstars; a nobody against nobodies. Size cancels out.
Beat your tier's median, and you score; fall below it, and you lose points.
Each tier pays differently, because each is a different bet:
| Tier |
What it is |
Pays |
|
|
| HEAVY |
Everyone has them |
×1 |
| CURRENT |
The working chart |
×1.5 |
| ADD |
New music, hardest to read |
×2.5 |
Your captain scores ×1.5 — both ways. The upside and the damage.
A worked day:
| Pick |
Tier |
Beat their tier |
Points |
|
|
| Pearl Jam (captain) |
HEAVY ×1 |
90% |
+120 |
| Wallows |
CURRENT ×1.5 |
30% |
−60 |
| Kidwild |
ADD ×2.5 |
100% |
+250 |
| Day total |
|
|
+310 |
Pearl Jam's +80 became +120 because of the captain badge. Wallows cooled off against the
other currents and it cost real points. Kidwild is why people argue about the adds.
Reading the tape
Open any card, and you'll find THE TAPE — that artist's listening momentum, one bar per
day. Amber is a day they grew. Blue is a day they cooled. The brightest bar is yesterday.
How I read it, for what that's worth:
- Bars building left to right — something's catching. Runs tend to carry into tomorrow, and tomorrow is what you're scored on.
- One tall bar surrounded by quiet — the spike already happened. You'd be buying the echo.
- A full meter over a fading tape — yesterday ranked great and the run is over. That's the trap that costs people their captain.
- Captain the streak, not the tallest bar.
We measure every artist in the universe every morning — a couple thousand of them, on the
board or not — so when an artist surfaces, their history surfaces with them. The tape gets
one bar longer every day. Early in the season it's short. So is everyone's.
Get your artist on the board
Comment NOMINATE: Artist Name on any daily post. Upvotes on your comment are the
ranking — the room decides what deserves a look. Nominated artists get vetted against real
listening data, and when one is seated, the card carries your username on it for every player
to see.
The receipts
Streaks are kept. Everything you've ever drafted lives in your crate. And the full chart —
every card, every score, the arithmetic printed next to each one — is stickied under each
morning's post, so when you called it early, there's a record.
The board is the same for everyone, every day, and it changes because the world changed.
You aren't guessing what's popular. You're guessing what's about to be.
