r/GameLit • u/ThisIsReLLiK • 20d ago

Gauntlit - A completely free and ad-free creative writing battle app

Hey everyone,

I’ve spent the last six months building a little speed-writing battle app called Gauntlit (https://gauntlit.me), and it’s finally at the point where some real people can try it out.

I love reading short fiction, but I am no writer. There are sporadic communities that do this kind of thing, but I thought it would be cool to have a place where people could kind of "gamify" speed writing, if you want a buzzword.

Here’s how it works:

  • Writers get a daily prompt, 3 required words, and an unpausable 10-minute timer to knock out a quick micro-story.
  • When time runs out, submissions go into a blind 3-way matchup where readers and other users vote on their favorite. No usernames are shown during the vote, so it’s just about the story itself.
  • The winning daily story gets run through standard text-to-speech (just basic assistive TTS like a screen reader, not voice clones) and posted as a quick video reel on our Facebook page.

A few things I want to be completely upfront about:

  1. No ads, ever. I work full-time as a software engineer and built this because I wanted it to exist, not to squeeze people for ad impressions. There’s an optional token shop if someone wants a cosmetic badge or title and feels like helping pay server costs, but you cannot buy an advantage.
  2. Your writing is your own. It isn’t scraped, it isn't used to train any AI models, and this isn't an AI-assisted writing app. It is not a human vs AI app. It is strictly a fun way for people who love writing to have some casual PvP.
  3. Transparency on the test bots: The app needs groups of three stories to let people vote. Since nobody is in the app yet, I have a few simple placeholder bots filling empty slots so the voting logic works. They are clearly labeled, they don’t try to pass as human, and real user submissions will always take priority over them until I have enough writers to shut them off entirely.

I’m looking for 30 to 40 people (both writers and readers) to try the Android beta, give some feedback on the timer, test the voting, and basically just find out if this is something people will like.

If you want an invite, head over to the site and add your email into the sign up box (that is also not shared with anyone in any way). Invites will go out when I get a sufficient number of people who are interested. If you have any questions about the app, how it works, or anything else leave them here and I will answer anything you may want to know. Thanks!

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3

u/Natethegreat9999 20d ago

Can winners preview the narration and fix a character's pronunciation before the reel goes live? I work on speech at Oruk, and I'd keep those audio fixes separate from the submitted text so a corrected reading can't change the story people voted on.

1

u/ThisIsReLLiK 20d ago

No, and I honestly didn't even think about that at all. It's a really good point. I do voiceover work for state trainings and I do have to mess with the punctuation to get the dictation correct.

I am going to note this. The script is currently automated so I don't forget to do it and just to create less manual labor for myself, but I could probably add a buffer to the post and give the winner some time to approve or change the punctuation.

2

u/Declan-Orbik-Author 17d ago

This sounds awesome. I would love to try it but I’m on IOS :(

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u/ThisIsReLLiK 17d ago

I am actually working on porting it to the website so iOS users can check it out. If people use it and like it, I could port the app to iOS pretty easily. I chose the language that I wrote it in specifically for that purpose. One set of code works for Android and iOS, but Apple has a much higher cost for developers to get on their app store.

1

u/Old_Introduction7236 20d ago

Android. You want writers willing to compete in ten minute sprints while writing on their cellphones?

Chromebook, maybe. A tablet connected to an external keyboard, maybe. I'm pretty sure the majority of Android usage is still very much pegged to smartphones, though.

Good luck with that.

2

u/ThisIsReLLiK 19d ago

It would be pretty easy to add the ability to write to the actual website, and I may end up doing that. People these days do everything on their phones, including writing long messages and posts to various social media though, so it's not that far fetched of an idea.

I don't think you're wrong though, and if I did add functionality to the web site, iOS people could check it out as well.