A pixel-art idle game about running an app studio. Ship updates, put out fires and survive App Review. Recruit 68 suspiciously familiar advisers, then sell your studio and do it all again. New in 2.0: App Review rejections, eight incidents, a Hall of Fame and a Game Center fortune leaderboard. Free on iPhone.
I work with app developers all day, and I wanted a game about what that job actually feels like. So Ship It is an idle tycoon where you start with one developer in a tiny office, ship updates, and slowly build a studio. Along the way, things go wrong the way they do in real life: servers go down on a Friday, an SDK gets sunset, and App Review rejects your build when the tech debt gets out of hand
Version 2.0 just went live. It adds an App Review mechanic, incidents, a Hall of Fame that carries across studio sales, and a Game Center leaderboard for your lifetime fortune
There are also 68 collectible advisers. Some of them might look a little familiar if you spend time on tech Twitter :)
It’s been a while since I’ve seen a tycoon game like this 😄 The dev studio theme makes it even more fun — I think any developer will recognize at least a few of these situations.
Maybe I’m biased because I’m a character in the game, but this game has gotten me hooked in a way no other game has in a long while. Reminds me of one of my early favorites on the App Store: Tiny Tower.
🎰 Launch-day giveaway: put your app in Ship It!
Ship It is full of made-up apps: To-Do Tomorrow, Doom Scroll, the Everything App… Today I want a real one in there.
If you've built an app, reply to this comment with: • a link to it • one line on what it does
At the end of launch day (midnight PT) I'll pick one reply at random. That app gets its own spot in the game in the next major update. One entry per person, and it has nothing to do with upvotes.
So, what have you shipped? 👇
About Ship It: Idle Dev Tycoon on Product Hunt
“The idle game where App Review can reject you”
Ship It: Idle Dev Tycoon launched on Product Hunt on September 30th, 2026 and earned 94 upvotes and 6 comments, placing #24 on the daily leaderboard. A pixel-art idle game about running an app studio. Ship updates, put out fires and survive App Review. Recruit 68 suspiciously familiar advisers, then sell your studio and do it all again. New in 2.0: App Review rejections, eight incidents, a Hall of Fame and a Game Center fortune leaderboard. Free on iPhone.
Ship It: Idle Dev Tycoon was featured in iOS (110.9k followers), Indie Games (7.2k followers) and Games (98.9k followers) on Product Hunt. Together, these topics include over 72.5k products, making this a competitive space to launch in.
Who hunted Ship It: Idle Dev Tycoon?
Ship It: Idle Dev Tycoon was hunted by Hendrik Haandrikman. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
Want to see how Ship It: Idle Dev Tycoon stacked up against nearby launches in real time? Check out the live launch dashboard for upvote speed charts, proximity comparisons, and more analytics.
Hendrik Haandrikman
Hey Product Hunt!
I work with app developers all day, and I wanted a game about what that job actually feels like. So Ship It is an idle tycoon where you start with one developer in a tiny office, ship updates, and slowly build a studio. Along the way, things go wrong the way they do in real life: servers go down on a Friday, an SDK gets sunset, and App Review rejects your build when the tech debt gets out of hand
Version 2.0 just went live. It adds an App Review mechanic, incidents, a Hall of Fame that carries across studio sales, and a Game Center leaderboard for your lifetime fortune
There are also 68 collectible advisers. Some of them might look a little familiar if you spend time on tech Twitter :)
It's free on iPhone, and you can play the whole game without paying. Payments run on RevenueCat, which is where I work. I built it with a lot of help from @Claude by Anthropic, @ChatGPT by OpenAI , @RevenueCat , @Supabase and Pixellab, as well as playtesting by @thomas_petit1 , @drbarnard , @hannahparvaz , and many more
If you've ever shipped an app, I'd love to hear which part of the job should become the next incident. Let me know :)
Rik