Wageslave
I quit my soul sucking job to make a game about it
Details
- External ID
- 47589735
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- Wageslave
- Website domain
- itch.io
- Launched
- March 31, 2026
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 16
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.6968019680196802
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
Description
Game development used to be something I dabbled in and off, and despite having chosen to major in Computer Science to follow a career in the field, I never managed to establish any consistency with it.So I relegated this aspiration to the realm of pipe dreams, something whose idea I preferred to the actual process of doing it, and I continued working as a software engineer.This only changed after a disruption to my job: the fintech I worked for got acquired by a big traditional bank and we were absorbed into their ranks.Long story short: it wasn't a culture fit.After six months, I decided to quit; earning a salary was the only thing keeping me there.With all this newfound free time, I decided to give game dev another chance. I would never get back those six months, but I could use them as fuel for creative inspiration.That's how the idea of wageslave came to be: I wanted to embody the absurdity of the 9 to 5 into an interactive format. As well as include winks and nods to developer culture.I don't know if I was successful with this goal, but it's been lots of fun creating it as well as being a cathartic experience for me. I am actually enjoying the process and not just the results. So much so that I'm aiming to complete at least two more projects before I reevaluate whether this is viable.I initially planned on releasing the game for free, but in the spirit of taking game dev seriously, I will be selling it for a small amount.Feel free to try the demo, I'd be happy to hear about any feedback!
Enrichment
- Theme
- indie hacker passion projects
- Vertical
- Media & entertainment
- Function
- Content generation
- Audience
- B2C
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Hobby / open-source project
- Normalized one-liner
- game about quitting your job
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
Yes Wageslave is a narrative dystopian office survival game / interactive fiction on itch.io. Narrative text-based or 2D choice-driven web games are straightforward to build and vibe code with modern game engines or web frameworks.
Discussion
10 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: HN Arcade
Concerns raised: unclear controls/unclear how to progress, marketing challenge without cute/anime aesthetics
Feature requests: clearer in-game control instructions
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 270 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #95 of 271 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 153 days after the earliest competitor.
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- Startup Equity Adventure Game · hn · 2026-04-26 · 36 upvotes · similarity 0.55
- I Created an Interactive Resume Space Invader Game · hn · 2026-02-27 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.53
- A Daily Bible Game · hn · 2026-01-08 · 49 upvotes · similarity 0.52
- An addictive phone game about phone addiction · hn · 2026-05-11 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.50
- I built 80 mini-games using Fable before it was shut down · hn · 2026-06-13 · 54 upvotes · similarity 0.50
- Replicant Space · hn · 2026-07-29 · 11 upvotes · similarity 0.48
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
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