I'm a backend engineer with zero game dev experience. I built a browser game anyway — it got 5,000+ views on Reddit in 2 days.

yuma t — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 04:33:01 +0000

First, just try it.

Ego Clicker — a browser clicker game about growing your following as an influencer.

🔗 Play: https://egoclicker.com
🔗 itch.io: https://yuma-0501.itch.io/ego-clicker

48 hours after posting to Reddit, I opened Google Analytics and saw numbers I'd never seen before.

I had almost zero game development experience. Never touched Unity. I'm a backend engineer who knows React and TypeScript — and I built a browser game without a game engine. Here's how it went.

1. Why I decided to build something

There was a period where I was looking for side income.

I work as a cloud and backend engineer, and I kept looking for ways to make money in my spare time. I explored freelance contracts, but nothing fit around my day job. Months passed.

Then I decided: just build something.

I had options — a utility tool, a SaaS, a library. But in the end, I chose a game.

2. Why a browser game with no engine

My strength is building browser applications. So why not build a game that runs entirely in the browser? No game engine to learn. React and TypeScript — tools I already knew.

A clicker game made sense for the same reason. Small scope, high chance of actually finishing it. I also remembered pulling all-nighters with Cookie Clicker back in college.

For the theme, I chose social media. I wanted to make a satirical game about the rise and fall of influencers — funny, but not quite. That's how Ego Clicker was born.

The core loop:

Post content → Gain followers → Earn likes → Buy items → Post better content

3. Tech stack

TypeScript 5.x
React 19
Vite
Zustand (state management)
break_infinity.js (large number calculation)
CSS Modules + CSS Variables
localStorage (save data)

The most notable choice is break_infinity.js. Likes in the late game easily exceed 10^20. JavaScript's native number loses precision at that scale, so a big number library was essential. It's the same library used by Cookie Clicker itself, and it handles numbers up to 10^(10^15).

For architecture, the key decision was complete separation of game logic from UI. All pure functions live under src/core/, and every 50ms, applyTick() returns a diff that gets applied to the Zustand store. Decoupling the game loop from React's render cycle kept performance issues away.

4. Building with generative AI

I don't think this game would have been finished without generative AI.

"I want the screen to show noise during a flame war." "I want dissonant chords in the BGM when sanity drops low." — For ideas like these, being able to talk through the implementation with AI made a real difference.

That said, AI speeds up writing code, but it doesn't speed up verifying it. Code gets generated fast. But whether the game balance is actually fun, whether the UI feels intuitive — that still takes a human. I'd test on my phone during the commute, log issues as notes, then come home and fix things with AI. That cycle repeated over and over.

5. Where I got stuck as a backend engineer

The hardest part was game balance.

The core formula looks simple enough:

Likes/sec = PPS × Follower Multiplier × Upgrade Multiplier
Follower Multiplier = 1 + log10(followers) × 0.5

But 31 items and various upgrades all feed into this. Change a cost slightly and suddenly "early game feels impossible," "mid game is boring," or "late game is over in seconds." One number, completely different game.

The other challenge was designing the item "descent into darkness." Items start out wholesome and gradually get grimmer:

Daily Posting Challenge
↓
Professional Photographer
↓
Fake Sub-accounts
↓
Budget Botnet
↓
Public Opinion Manipulation Farm
↓
Brain Chip Direct Broadcast

Making this progression feel natural — tuning the order and costs so each step feels like a believable slide — was honestly harder than writing any of the code.

6. Shipping and the response

I shipped with 20–30 open issues. That was the moment I stopped waiting for perfect.

The first thing I did after release was post to Reddit. I wrote a post in English and submitted it to r/incremental_games. Within 2 days, it had over 5,000 views. Most of the traffic came from abroad — the US, UK, Canada, Germany, and Australia.

That's when it hit me: building something and getting it to people are completely different skills.

7. Give it a try

Random "viral moments" pop up as you play — tap them fast and you'll get a flood of likes. Get caught in a scandal and an apology minigame starts: 3 face-down cards, one good outcome, one okay, one that makes things worse. You won't know which is which until you flip it.

Once your followers exceed the entire population of Earth, the game doesn't end. There's more.

The prestige (rebrand) system is themed after HTTP status codes. You start at 200 OK. Then 404 Not Found. 403 Forbidden. Eventually 418 I'm a teapot.