Nicheloom visits: 58,069 all-time · 7,637 in the last 7 days

The opportunity tracker for new startups.

Today: 1,953 launches · Niche of the day: specialized calculation tools · See what launched today →

A terminal-native idle factory game, written in Rust with ratatui

Get picks like this daily. Today's launch numbers, the top launches, AI and tech news, and a daily opportunity pick, straight to your inbox.

Want to reach these readers? Sponsor an issue.

Hey HN readers!I'm snipedbywifi (https://gitlab.com/snipedbywifi), and i've been working on terminactory. Please try it out if you'd like to play a cozy factory game while waiting for long agent tasks to finish!The game is a factory game (overused niche, i know xD), but runs in your terminal. Reason i built it? glad you asked: So basically, it started off with me wanting a terminal-native factory game. Me and the modern 5.5 claude models made a base for the game that I liked, and then i went ham adding features / fixing some minor flaws (like adding claude code hooks so you recieve "telegrams" [the agent's responses], so you can review progress directly in-game). (yes, I had heavy AI assistance, disclaimer!!!)Right now, the game has basic factory features you'd expect from a game like this (build stuff, delete stuff, measure how much you're earning, basic selection tools), along with a few more.. "unexpected" features. This includes a fake in-game browser that has a wiki, fake forums, some fun bits of lore, some more lore, a LOT more lore, and a research graph that shows how many items or how much RP (research points) you'd need to unlock something, and some more QOL features.If anyone actually has this issue / want of a terminal-based game that runs alongside your agents so you don't doomscroll, do you have any suggestions, or additional ideas I could add?It's hosted on GitLab, soo, that's one additional thing i'd like to mentionThanks for reading!! snipedbywifi(p.s. first HN post lol) (p.s. p.s. there's a lot of hidden lore in the game, so.. lore-divers? you might like it?)

HN · launched Nov 14, 2026 · 84 upvotes (top 13%) · 0 views

Niche: terminal and arcade games · 42 launches, 3 in the last 7 days · Explore this niche →

Category and tags

  • Horizontal
  • B2C
  • Not AI
  • Hobby / open-source project

Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗

Could you build this?

Yes A terminal idle factory game in Rust with ratatui is a self-contained simulation with a TUI, a game loop, and save data. It is well within reach of AI-assisted development.

Discussion

14 comments analyzed.

Competitors mentioned: Factorio, Dwarf Fortress, Cataclysm, NetHack, Kitty

Concerns raised: terminal display is the only value proposition, may be interesting for only about 10 minutes

Feature requests: custom font map pieces, Nerd Fonts icon support

Competitors

Other products that read as similar to this one : 748 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.

Attention rank: #105 of 749 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).

Launched 379 days after the earliest competitor.

The niche, labels, vibe code rating and competitor comparison on this page are analysis by Nicheloom. If you use them, please credit nicheloom.com. How you may use our data.