Easy Lens
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The Easy Lens and Contra $10k challenge winners

1,700 creators, seven days, more than 1,800 Lenses. Here are the three that won, and what the judges saw in them.

  1. Grand prize, $5,000: Braulio Cardenas, Pet Feast. Braulio set himself a hard task: build a real casual game in Easy Lens. He started from a simple sketch, had a playable prototype back in minutes, then kept going. He tightened the game, redrew the visuals, added animation and polished it until it felt finished. Pet Feast is a fast game where you feed pets by swiping the right food to them. It is fun to play, which is the hardest part to get right, and it holds up round after round.

    The judges picked it for the craft at every step. Braulio built the world around the game as well, so the video and the matching Lenses read as one thing instead of a single entry. The Easy Lens team passed it around the office, then got competitive about the high score, which is the best review a game can get.

    Play it: on.contra.com/pQq8hL

    Braulio Cardenas, grand prize, $5,000, beside a phone showing his Pet Feast game with a bear cub and bowls of food

  2. Runner-up, $2,250: Aira J, Sprinkle Me. Aira built a Lens that turns your face into a dripping donut character. Glossy pink drips, sugared lashes, the lot. It is chaotic, it is easy to share, and it works as a birthday Lens for anyone.

    The judges picked it because Aira learned the new AI Face Generator and got everything out of it. The story she told around the Lens was as strong as the Lens itself, and she kept posting through the whole competition, which made her one of the creators people watched.

    Try it: on.contra.com/k7pGgp

    Aira J, runner-up, $2,250, beside a phone showing her Sprinkle Me Lens, a face covered in glossy pink icing and sprinkles

  3. Third place, $1,000: Paula Casado, Skyline Stack. Paula came from Lens Studio, and this was her first time in Easy Lens. She set out to use as many features as she could in one project, and shipped a tower stacking game: you control a moving crane, drop a block at the right moment, and try to build the tallest skyline you can. It has a score, a best score, a preview of the next block, and face tracked players in the windows.

    The judges picked it for how much she fit into a first project. The physics feel right, from the swing of the crane to the wobble when a block lands off center, and it turns into a real contest when you play against a friend.

    Stack it: on.contra.com/HGMLT9

    Paula Casado, third place, $1,000, beside a phone showing her Skyline Stack game, a crane lifting blocks over a city skyline

  4. Your turn. Every one of these started the same way: one idea, typed into a box, built into a Lens in minutes. Open easylens.snapchat.com, make something ridiculous and publish it. With Lens+, a Lens can keep earning you a share of payouts long after you publish it.

    More competitions are coming. Follow along on Discord, Instagram, YouTube, X and Reddit.

Three winning Lenses you can play, and the same starting point for all of them: one sentence in a chat box.