I built an idle game that rewards you for doomscrolling less
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HN · launched Sep 28, 2026 · 7 upvotes (top 56%) · 0 views
Niche: distraction and screen time blockers · 257 launches, 30 in the last 7 days ▲ +7% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Media & entertainment
- Vertical SaaS
- B2C
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 257 launches in distraction and screen time blockers →
Could you build this?
Partial A web idle game is easy to build, but accessing and enforcing actual system screen time tracking requires native OS-level mobile integrations with restricted APIs.
What it would actually take: A real app requires native iOS/Android development using Apple's Screen Time API (FamilyControls and DeviceActivity frameworks) or Android's UsageStatsManager, requiring special platform entitlements and background daemon processes to securely feed usage metrics into the game progression engine.
Discussion
4 comments analyzed.
Feature requests: Reward tiers with cooldown timers for restricted apps
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 536 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #286 of 537 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 332 days after the earliest competitor.
- I wrote a DOOM clone in my own programming language · hn · 2026-04-28 · 34 upvotes · similarity 0.59
- I help founders kill doom scrolling and hook people's attention fast · hn · 2026-05-27 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.58
- I made a roguelike game playable over SSH · hn · 2026-01-21 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.54
- intermission · github · 2026-10-02 · 99 upvotes · similarity 0.53
- Permanent Underclass · hn · 2026-02-24 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.52
- Built my 15-year-old game idea · hn · 2026-08-20 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.51
- CursedLands · github · 2026-10-01 · 8 upvotes · similarity 0.50
- Deep Hollow · hn · 2026-03-27 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.50
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.