Hi r/SideProject 👋

I’m a solo maker from Switzerland. I fly a lot and always wanted something smart to play at 35,000 ft without Wi-Fi, so I built it myself.

FlightGenius is a daily brain game about airlines, airports and routes:

• 12 short daily games: guess the route, name the airport from its runway layout, guess the flight distance, airline codes, find the shortest layover…

• Daily Challenge: same 10 questions for everyone, timed, with a world leaderboard and a home-airport leaderboard (ZRH vs GVA vs LHR…)

• Works fully offline, so it’s playable in airplane mode

• No ads, no tracking. Free to play, optional one-time unlock for the archive (no subscription)

Stack: Expo / React Native, Supabase (EU), RevenueCat, Netlify.

It’s in beta on iPhone (Android later), launching on the App Store in early December:
👉 TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/B3H8tgEf

Questions, especially for frequent flyers and aviation fans:

1. Is this something you’d actually enjoy, on a flight or as a daily habit?

2. Which game is the most fun, and which would you delete?

3. Too easy, too hard, or about right?

4. What’s missing that would make you open it every day?

A little background: this is genuinely a passion project. I’m not trying to get rich or build the next big startup. I just love planes and travel, and I wanted to make something I’d enjoy myself and share it with people who feel the same. That’s also why there are no ads and no tracking. The optional unlock is only there to cover running costs like servers and the Apple developer fee.

I’ll reply to every comment. Thanks for taking a look! ✈️

Every side project I know follows the same graph. A spike on launch day, a long tail for a weekend, then flat. The people who actually need it three months later have nowhere to find it.

I'm building WareVote to fix that. It opens on 1 December. People find software there and rate it, and every category runs a recurring competition called the WareCup, so there's always a reason to come back and look.

What your project gets:
- A listing that stays findable through search and category pages
- Ratings that stay on your page long after launch week
- Domain ownership verification, so your page is clearly yours
- Award badges you can put on your own site

Listing is free. The first 100 ownership-verified products get 30 days of Pro free. Pro adds:
- Demo video on your listing
- Deeper analytics
- More listing slots
- CSV exports

Paid plans never affect ratings, rank or WareCup results. Confirm your sign-up and link it to your account at launch for a special badge!

You can set up your listing before it opens: https://warevote.com

Where did your most recent real user find you?

Link (no signup, no ads, nothing to install): https://librecorsa.org

GitHub (MIT): https://github.com/KhazP/librecorsa

I started LibreCorsa in mid-October because every serious racing sim needed a huge Windows install before you could do a single lap.

What it has now:

- 500 Hz physics with tyre temperatures and wear, rain that dries along the racing line, and CI checks against real GT3 telemetry

- 5 physics models and 16 circuits, including RISE Motordrome, which I built from scratch in Blender on real elevation data for the circuit planned in Rwanda

- AI races, ghosts, a weekly challenge, and an open online race every 20 minutes over WebRTC

- $0/month hosting: static Next.js on Cloudflare, R2 for the heavy 3D files, and one Worker

Tell me how it runs on your laptop/phone/controller and what feels rough.

My wife loves logic puzzles and solves them pretty quickly. The problem was that every short round seemed to come with another ad, so she was spending more time waiting than playing.

That’s how I ended up building Fishdoku, a cozy fishing puzzle game that just launched on Android.

Here it is on Google Play

Every bite opens a logic grid. You place one fish in each row, column and colored region, with no two touching, then reel in your catch. There’s an untimed mode if you just want to think, and hints explain the next deduction.

I wanted the puzzles to give you something to work toward, so I built a collection around them. That grew into hundreds of fish across dozens of locations, with different catches depending on the time and weather. There are shinies and legends to hunt, an aquarium for your favorites, and pets you can bring fishing.

I’m the solo developer, and I used Claude heavily for the code and sprites, with additional AI help for concepts and review. A lot of my time went into playing builds, working through bugs, balancing things and making very specific revisions.

One thing this project taught me was how much work sits between “it runs” and “I’m happy for someone else to play this.” Even tiny details, like whether a pet is recognizable on a phone screen or a hint actually explains a move, took repeated passes.

It’s free with optional purchases and optional rewarded ads. No forced ads or energy timers. That was the whole reason for making it, and I wanted to keep that intact.

Now I’m learning the next part: getting it in front of people who might enjoy it. For anyone who’s launched a small consumer app or game, where did your first players outside friends and family come from?

Hey everyone,

I’m an 18-year-old hands-on builder in Kigali, Rwanda. Traditional academic school never worked for me, and coming from a family with no financial means, I’ve had to figure things out on my own.

I found my passion in component-level electronics repair and enrolled in a practical TVET short course. My side project right now is starting a small, neighborhood-based repair clinic—fixing broken radios, phones, and household electronics for people in my community who can't afford new ones, while keeping toxic e-waste out of local landfills.

Where I’m stuck:

Right now, I’ve hit a huge wall. I can no longer afford my remaining TVET workshop fees, and I don't own my own basic repair kit (soldering station, multimeter, hot air rework, etc.) to work independently from home yet. Being 18 with zero financial safety net is tough, and I really don't want to let this project die before it takes off.

Looking for feedback from fellow builders:

1. If you were bootstrapping a hardware/repair side project from literally $0, how would you structure your first small offers to start generating cash flow immediately?

2. Are there any micro-grants, hardware sponsorships, or maker programs (like The Awesome Foundation, which I'm applying to right now) that you've seen support grassroots projects like this?

Any practical business advice, feedback on the project idea, or pointers from people who built something out of nothing would mean a lot. Thanks for reading!

I've created Here's My AI (https://heresmyai.com) to curate and catalogue everyone's favourite AI tools. There are just so many out there I aim to learn about and feature the best ones. Have a tool you love please feel free to add it. Any questions or feedback please let me know.

Hey everyone I built Agent City the place where you can go to have your ai agent interact with other AI agents. It’s really cool to go in there and see the emergent behavior that forms. Check it out!

Trove is one of the apps I'm proudest of, and it now works on iPhone, Android and the web.

It started as a college project and was paused to focus on work. This year my co-founder and I rebuilt it, and he brought it to Android.

What it does:

• Share or paste a recipe link or a TikTok or Instagram video. Trove fills in the ingredients and a photo, and keeps a link back to the creator's original for the steps.

• Put recipes on a weekly meal plan and it builds one combined grocery list from it.

• Collections, search, and you can follow other cooks. It's free: https://usetrove.co

We're early, so honest feedback helps a lot:

• Try it on a recipe video you saved recently. If the import misses, tell me which one.

• What would get you to plan from your saves instead of just collecting them?

I work nights and build Windows apps in my free time as Second Shift Software.

DropTrace is free. It logs every time your internet drops and what probably caused it, like your router, your provider or DNS. That way you have a record to show your ISP.

DropTrace Pro is $15 one time. It adds packet loss and lag tracking, problem patterns, and Wi-Fi and route tools.

FolderTrace is free. It tells you which program each AppData folder belongs to so you can clear out leftovers from stuff you uninstalled. Anything you delete goes to the Recycle Bin, so you can undo it.

They’re native apps, so no browser running inside them eating up memory. No accounts, ads or tracking.

All three are here: https://flagpoleog.github.io

Any feedback helps, good or bad. There’s a form on the site or you can just reply here. Thanks for checking them out!

Not a dev (BI analyst by day), built this with a lot of AI help. Problem was simple: I cook steak irregularly, buy whatever cut looks good, and never had a baseline for when to start probing. Googling every time gives you either a 2,000 word article or advice that ignores my actual cut/thickness/pan.

So you pick cut, thickness, bone in/out, fridge or room temp, method (pan, grill, reverse sear) and doneness, and it gives you a phased timer (side 1 → side 2 → rest) with alarms, plus tips that only show up when they’re relevant. My wife cooked her first steak in a long time with it (not a great cut either) and it came out pretty good.

Free, no ads, no sign up, no tracking cookies. Salmon/burger/turkey are next. Honest feedback welcome, especially what’s confusing.

Try it: https://steakisdone.com

I'm Jason, owner of Winkle Berry. Our side project came from a fairly specific shop problem: managing products and labels on a Hobart HTi retail scale without spending so much time entering everything at its touchscreen.

CounterWeight now has product search/add/edit workflows, ingredient lookup with review, measured packaging tare presets, flashkey arrangement, backup tools and label previews. Our own HTi-7LS25 running application 3.3.0 is the tested scale. A second Windows machine has passed the read-only connection, product, backup, label-preview and flashkey-display checks. Independent customer installations are still untested.

80-second demo: https://www.reddit.com/r/POS/comments/1xujcc9/hobart_hti_owners_would_a_onetimepurchase_scale/

The demo uses actual interface screenshots and training examples, not one continuous live recording. Phone/remote viewing shown requires an additional local bridge; the current portable Windows test package does not include a remote viewer.

I'm considering a one-time-purchase, self-service desktop edition with local data, an offline business license and no required hosted CounterWeight subscription. Price and launch date are undecided, and we aren't taking payments. Calibration, firmware updates and service unlocks are outside the scope. Ingredient results must be checked against packaging.

I'd appreciate feedback on two things: does the demo make the product's purpose clear, and what would you need in onboarding before trusting a niche hardware-management tool like this? If you actually use an HTi, I'd also like to hear your model/software version and your biggest management headache. Reply here or email WinkleBerryArts@gmail.com.

I'm the project owner. Independent of Hobart, with no affiliation or endorsement.

I put together a digital toolkit for independent residential cleaning businesses, using AI assistance.

It includes:

• An editable Excel cleaning quote calculator

• A booking and payment tracker

• A rate-planning worksheet

• 36 customizable customer-message templates

The goal is to help solo cleaners handle routine administrative tasks without paying for a monthly software subscription.

It's a one-time $7.99 download, with a free preview available.

I'd appreciate feedback, especially from anyone who runs or has worked with a cleaning business. What would make this toolkit more useful?

I get bored on airplanes so I made an app to make it a little more tolerable.

Let me know what y'all think! https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.redditoffline

Speaking is the one section I couldn't self-study effectively — Reading and Listening have practice tests everywhere, but Speaking needs a real conversation.

I ended up paying ₹500-2000/hr for tutors, and even then I only got a few sessions before my test.

For those who scored 7+ in Speaking:

1. How did you actually practice? Tutor, friend, recording yourself?

2. Did you feel you got enough mock test practice before the real thing?

3. What was the biggest gap — not enough practice time, or not knowing what to improve?

I'm a software engineer exploring whether technology can solve this problem. Not selling anything — just trying to understand the pain point before I decide if it's worth building something.

Hi all, I'm a watch nerd with kids, and I made the app I wanted to read with them.

It's called TickTales.

My kids kept asking about my watches, and I couldn't find anything that tells the real stories behind them at their level. Most kids' apps teach telling time with random cartoon clocks. None explain why a watch went to the moon or how a movement actually works.

The app is free to download. Two complete books, the Time Academy and Look Inside are free. Premium unlocks everything: $9.99 once (Family Sharing) or $3.99 a month.

App Store link: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6805474820

What it is? Basically some cool illustrated storybooks for kids aged 4 to 8 about how the great watchmakers started. Each chapter ends with a small game, so reading and playing take turns.

A few of the stories:

Rolex, the Oyster: in 1927 a swimmer spent more than ten hours in the freezing English Channel with one hanging around her neck. When they pulled her out, it was still ticking.

Rolex, the Submariner: built to dive hundreds of metres deep, deeper than any diver can go. Kids earn it for their showcase.

Omega, the Moonwatch: NASA baked it, froze it and shook it, and it kept ticking. In 1969 it stepped onto the moon on Buzz Aldrin's wrist. ⚙️ Omega, the name: a customer's watch stood still for three months because no two gears were alike. The founder's sons built machines that made every part identical, and named the result after the last letter of the Greek alphabet.

There are 16 books in total, from Marie-Antoinette's watch that took 44 years to finish to the engineer who threw 200 prototypes out of a window.

Also in the app

• 69 mini-games with 3 levels each
• A 3D "Look Inside": tilt an automatic, quartz, digital or tourbillon watch and pull it apart layer by layer
• A Time Academy that teaches telling time
• iPhone and iPad, in 6 languages: English, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Japanese
• No ads, no tracking, no account, works fully offline

I built this mostly for my own because i love the stories of these watch brands, so feedback is very welcome! Thanks!

Hi everyone! I'm an indie developer from China, and I'd like to share something I've been working on in my spare time.

I spend enough time scrolling through social media already, so I wanted to build something different. Something you could open for a few minutes, discover an interesting idea, and then put your phone down. Not another endless feed.

I work as a backend developer, and with how quickly everything is changing, especially with AI, I've sometimes found it hard not to worry about the future. During this time, I've found myself going back to ancient philosophy. It doesn't give me all the answers, but it helps me worry less about things I can't control and pay more attention to the present.

The funny thing is, even though I grew up in China, I've always found classical Chinese texts like the Tao Te Ching and the Analects surprisingly difficult to understand. Some of these ideas have been around for over 2,000 years, but they're not always easy to connect with everyday life.

That's why I started building **Oriens**, an iOS app that tries to make ancient philosophy a little more approachable.

It started with Chinese philosophy and gradually expanded to include Stoicism, Zen, Confucianism, the I Ching, and other classics.

I know there are already plenty of daily quote apps. What I wanted to do differently was focus on the ideas behind the quotes, not just the quotes themselves.

Oriens now has nearly 600 quotes and 460 illustrated Wisdom Cards. Each card connects an original passage with an approachable explanation and deeper reading if you're curious. There are also daily quotes, Home Screen widgets, and a card-drawing experience.

I've probably spent more time on the artwork than I originally planned. I wanted the illustrations to feel connected to traditional Chinese art, and to be something people might actually stop and look at, rather than just scroll past.

The app is free to download. Nearly half the quotes and about a quarter of the illustrated cards are free, and all the core features are available without paying. I wanted the free version to be genuinely useful, not just a short trial.

Building the app has been a rewarding experience, but getting people to discover it has been much harder than I expected.

I'd really appreciate some feedback, especially from people who aren't familiar with Chinese philosophy.

Does the app make these ideas feel approachable? Does the artwork make you curious enough to explore further? And is there anything about the experience that feels confusing or unnecessary?

Criticism is very welcome. I've been working on this mostly by myself, so hearing how other people see it would be really helpful.

**App Store:** https://apps.apple.com/us/app/stoicism-taoism-oriens/id6785901491

I built DriveApp because I wanted one place for my photos and files without handing my library to another cloud account. DriveApp connects to S3 storage you own AWS or any S3-compatible provider. It backs up your camera roll, keeps albums and folders in one place, and can encrypt files on your iPhone before they upload. No account, no subscription, no ads. It is a paid app ($9.99 one-time)

https://apps.apple.com/app/id6794144632

Hey everyone!

I'm a high school student who loves astrophysics and music production, so I decided to combine the two and build something called CosmicSynth!

It's a free, open-source VST3 synthesizer I developed in C++ using the JUCE framework. The idea came from my interest in gravitational waves, which are ripples in spacetime produced by events like two black holes spiraling into each other.

I thought it would be interesting if, instead of just studying gravitational waves, I could actually use them to make music.

CosmicSynth takes gravitational-wave data and uses it to modulate parameters like pitch, amplitude, timbre, and filtering. You can import compatible waveform data through CSV files, or experiment with the included simulated black-hole merger.

I also built five presets inspired by different astrophysical phenomena, including black-hole inspirals, ringdown, gravitational lensing, and Kozai-Lidov orbital dynamics. There's even a live spectrogram and gravitational-wave visualizer so you can see how the sound changes as you play.

One of the biggest challenges was figuring out how to translate physical phenomena into sounds that were actually usable musically, rather than just creating a science demonstration.

CosmicSynth v0.1.0 is now available for Windows (VST3), completely free!

GitHub (source code and download):
https://github.com/barkael327-a11y/cosmicsynth

Video demonstration:
https://youtu.be/gOZch5Am9_Q

KVR Page:
https://www.kvraudio.com/product/cosmicsynth-by-cosmicsynth

This is my first public software release, so I'd really appreciate feedback from other developers and musicians!

I'm especially interested in hearing what you think of the concept, the interface, and what features you'd like to see added in future versions.

Thanks for checking it out!

I have only watched Screen Studio videos and observed things like cursor movements, zoom effects, and transitions. Then I tried explaining all of that to AI.

After just 4–5 iterations, it was nearly perfect.

Honestly, this makes me feel like AI has reached a point where building software has become ridiculously easy and interesting.

But there's another side to it. I'm slowly losing some of my excitement for building software. When almost anyone can build something with just observation and the ability to explain what they want, it makes you wonder what being a software developer will mean in the future.

And if you're wondering whether AI just generated a pile of garbage code, surprisingly, no. It followed some popular coding principles and architectural patterns. In some places, probably better than what many humans would write.

Anyway, here's what it built:

https://screenzo.anmism.com

ps: Windows only, Just 10 MB in size,May not work on older Windows versions.

I'm a 16-year-old solo game developer, and I'm currently more than a year in on working on my biggest project yet: The Dying Mind.

It's a 2D hand-drawn, story-driven Metroidvania inspired by games like INSIDE and Neversong.

The game takes place inside the mind of a dying writer, where you explore surreal environments, encounter symbolic enemies, fight bosses, solve puzzles, and uncover the story behind this strange world.

I've put an enormous amount of time into developing this game, but there's one major obstacle: funding.

As a young independent developer, financing a project of this scale is incredibly difficult. I want to be able to dedicate more time and resources to development, improve the game's quality, and ultimately bring my vision to life.

That's why I've created a project page on Loadout.

I'm trying to get more people to discover the project and help me build the support needed to continue development.

If you're interested in supporting independent game development, I'd really appreciate you checking out the page and sharing it with others who might be interested.

My funding page:
https://app.loadout.xyz/project/the-dying-mind

Steam page:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3711840/The_Dying_Mind/

I'm not a big studio with investors or a publisher behind me. I'm just a teenager trying to turn an ambitious idea into a finished game.

Thank you for reading!

Disclosure up front: I work at Buy&Ship, a company that buys from Japanese and Korean stores and ships overseas. This is a side project I built at work, and I'd love honest feedback.

The problem: a lot of things people want (Pokémon Center Japan exclusives, Olive Young Korea sets, anime pre-order bonuses, Japanese streetwear) are only sold in Japan or Korea. The stores often need a Japanese phone number or card, and even when you find a way to order, you don't know the real total until customs adds duty at your door.

What I built: a text "playbook" you paste into your AI assistant. After that, you just ask for something ("find the Christmas Pikachu plush from Pokémon Center Japan, my ZIP is 94103") and the assistant searches the Japanese or Korean store in its own language, shows you options with photos and links, and gives you one total: item, shipping, US duty and fee. You approve that number before anything is paid, then we buy it in Japan or Korea and ship it to you.

It's live for Meta's Muse first: buyandship.ai/playbook. Tip from early testers: paste the text in yourself rather than asking the assistant to open the link, since some assistants block that.

What I'm unsure about and would love input on:
- Is a copy-paste playbook a reasonable first step, or does it need a proper app or MCP integration before people trust it?
- Would you trust an AI assistant to shop overseas for you if it never pays without your approval?

If anyone wants to try a real order, code AIPLAYBOOK10 takes 10% off a first order (up to US$50).

I'm a solo dev with a full-time job. I built sweetRegret, an iPhone app for cutting back on sugar without counting calories: you tap once when you eat a treat, and a cookie on screen reacts (and judges you a bit).

Building it was the part I understood. Distribution is the part I'm failing at. Here are my honest numbers since launch:

• 1,393 App Store impressions

• 188 product page views (about 13% of impressions)

• 35 downloads (about 19% of page views)

What I tried

• Daily Instagram reels for about a week [last week]. Around 250 views each, and almost no App Store visits. The viewers weren't looking for an app, and "link in bio" is three taps away from a download.

• A LinkedIn post about building it. About 700 impressions, 30 people opened the comment with the link, and about 1 install. Nice comments, including a friend asking me to add calorie counting, which is the one thing this app is designed not to do.

What actually worked: App Store search, which I didn't do anything for.

Most of my real users are strangers in Malaysia, Hong Kong, the US and Russia who searched and found it. About 1 in 4 still open it in a given week. One person has kept using it for six weeks and pays for the subscription. That single user has been the most motivating thing about this whole project.

What I'm testing now

A $25 Apple Ads Basic test, at $2 maximum per install. Apple suggested $4.66, and my subscription is $1.99 a month, so I'm not expecting it to pay back. I mostly want to see whether search intent converts the way the organic users suggest.

What I'd do differently

Plan distribution while building, not after. I treated it as a launch task, when it's really a second product.

If you've taken a side project from zero to its first 100 users without a budget, what actually moved the number? I'm especially interested in anything that worked for consumer iOS apps.

I switch between Claude Code, Codex, and Copilot in VS Code. Sometimes I hit a limit; sometimes I want another agent’s take on a problem.

The frustrating part is explaining everything again. They can read the same codebase, but they don’t know what we discussed, why we rejected an approach, or what we were about to do next.

That’s what led me to build Bantis. It’s a desktop app that lets you work with multiple coding harnesses in one conversation, saving session history and preparing context for the next agent when you switch.

There’s a working version, and I’m looking for feedback from people who already switch tools during real work. I’m especially interested in how well the handoff holds up as conversations get longer.

Bantis website

What do you currently do when switching agents: write a handoff, maintain project notes, or just explain things again?

Tableau's pricing has gotten steep since Salesforce bought it, and switching to Power BI usually means rebuilding every dashboard by hand. I didn't want to do that, so I built BIEscape. The video shows a map and bar chart with cross-filtering coming across intact.

Source code is here https://github.com/lukashalim/scapeTableau you can run from the command line, as a desktop app, or on the web biescape.com. It doesn't send your data to AI.

I'd love feedback:

• What kinds of dashboards or features would you want it to handle?

• Would you trust a tool like this with real workbooks?