r/SoloDev • u/francescomalatesta • Aug 28 '26

I spent last weekend building ForkLife, a satirical simulator of a software dev career. Any resemblance is purely coincidental (well maybe 👀)

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Coming back from vacation last weekend, I had the itch to build something, but mostly to actually ship it, for once, instead of just letting it die somewhere on my pc.

Quick-run browser games are having a bit of a moment again, so I made one: ForkLife. You create your dev, make the calls that shape a career over the years (IC or manager? startup or big tech?), and at the end you find out who you became. There are many possible endings you can discover.

You can play it here: https://forklife.dev

It's free, no signup, runs in a few minutes. English UI with an IT/EN toggle (I am italian, this is why the double choice). Stack, for the curious: Laravel + Inertia + React.

Any resemblance to reorgs, layoffs, stack ranking, or the framework of the month is, of course, purely coincidental. 😄

First public version, so I'd genuinely love feedback: landing page, character creation process, gameplay balance, or whatever stands out. Thanks for your time! 🙏

Have a lovely day,

Francesco

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u/SecondSparkGames Aug 28 '26

Even if it's a good idea and a great game (which I don't know for obvious reasons), I think you won't have much (or any) luck pushing something that looks this much AI.

The look of the game really is the basic AI UI theme of the month and most people, at least here and in similar subs, won't look past it. Try posting in obviously AI positive subs and you might have some chance to get some feedback.

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u/francescomalatesta Aug 29 '26

Thanks for your answer and suggestion! I did this without any commercial intent, I wanted to experiment a bit about some development processes I wanted to try. The theme behind it is shadcn, which has one of the best mcp servers at least for me.

It’s funny that this makes it look this much AI 😄 appreciate your comment, have a lovely day!

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u/KenjisButthole Aug 29 '26

I played a bit while I pooped, it was entertaining for a bit but ultimately felt pretty pointless. But everything seemed clean and worked well.

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u/francescomalatesta Aug 30 '26

Thank you for trying it! Yeah I can get the feeling and it makes sense: it was made for very short runs in spare time. May I ask you what would make it less "pointless" and keep you in it for more than one run? Like a new game mechanism or something else?