App Developer Tycoon

App Developer Tycoon is a turn-based narrative tycoon game about the grind of building an indie app studio. You start as a bedroom coder paying $5 a day in rent, quit your job and develop apps one at a time. Each day you spend Action Points, ship an app and face simulated users’ judgments, while rival studios watch for a chance to clone your next hit.

Make and improve apps

For each app, choose from 12 genres, write a description and pick a name. A poor name lowers your score before anyone downloads the app, while a strong pitch can rescue a mediocre app. You can develop skills through a skill tree with 25 levels per skill; a different skill is offered each day, letting you build toward specialties such as coding or marketing.

Events and rivals

You can attend hackathons, investor pitches, design workshops and networking coffees. Some activities cost money, some earn it, and others offer small talk and free pastries. ByteWorks competes with you: if you reach number one, the studio notices, and if you succeed with a genre, it may clone your app and email you about it. Rival studios ship apps, compete and taunt you; trends shift, apps lose value over time, and no app earns forever. Story events have consequences, and taking a week off advances time by seven days.

Grow your studio

Advance from a Bedroom to a Garage, Co-working Space, Studio and Silicon Valley HQ, then further still. Each workspace unlocks new genres, more project slots and bigger opportunities, while rent rises with your ambitions. The climb from your first bedroom app to the top of the charts takes dozens of hours, and the story has an ending to earn.

Game features

• A turn-based daily loop, with rent always due
• 12 app genres: Utility, Puzzle, Social, Fitness, Finance, Casual Game, Dating, Photo Editor, Education, AI Tool, VR App and Space Tech
• 46 Easter eggs hidden in app names
• Revenue charts, finance logs, a Hall of Fame and auto-save