I Made a Cyberpunk Idle Game About Doomscrolling — And It's Uncomfortably Accurate

I've spent years watching how people interact with their phones. The endless scroll. The dopamine hit. The feeling of productivity when nothing's actually getting done.

So I built Doomscroll 2077 — a free browser idle game that turns that addiction into something tangible.

The Premise

In Doomscroll 2077, you're a data miner in a cyberpunk empire. Your primary activity? Scrolling. You scroll endlessly through feeds, extracting AURA (attention value) and building an empire one tap at a time.

The parallels are intentional.

You gain data from scrolling. That data gets converted into AURA. AURA fuels your empire. The more you scroll, the bigger your empire grows. And just like real social media, the engagement mechanics are designed to keep you coming back.

Game Mechanics

The Core Loop

Scroll → Mine Data
Data → Extract AURA
AURA → Build Infrastructure
Infrastructure → Prestige & Upgrade

It's the classic idle game loop, but wrapped in a narrative about digital consumption and empire-building.

Prestige System

Like most incremental games, you eventually reset your progress to gain permanent multipliers. In Doomscroll 2077, this is called "Prestige." You sacrifice your current empire to unlock bonuses that carry forward forever.

It's a mechanic that keeps players engaged across weeks and months.

Why I Built a Game

As a founder, building a game felt like an unconventional marketing move. But games are the most authentic content engine there is.

When someone plays Doomscroll 2077, they're experiencing a interactive story about digital culture. They're thinking about their own relationship with doomscrolling. They're laughing at the irony.

And they're playing on my portfolio.

That's infinitely more effective than a landing page.

The Dev Story

Tech Stack: Vanilla JavaScript, Canvas API, localStorage for persistence
Development Time: 3 months
Lines of Code: ~2000
Players: Growing organically on Reddit, Indie Hackers, and Hacker News

I handled everything myself — design, mechanics, UI, art (simple but intentional), and even the writing. The constraint of being solo meant every decision had to matter.