I built a game called Pyramid, and for the first week after launch, I mostly watched it in silence — checking logs, seeing if anyone would actually play. Then one night, a player found it, and something happened I didn't expect.
The setup
Pyramid is simple on paper: join a live round, a shared multiplier grows as more strangers join with you, exit anytime to lock in your multiplier, or hold out for more. If too few people join before the window closes, the round collapses and everyone still in loses their stake.
No real money — it runs on a free in-game currency. I built it to test one thing: could a mechanic built entirely around trusting strangers actually hold someone's attention?
The 30 minutes
One player found the game, played a round, then just... didn't stop. Thirty minutes straight on Pyramid alone, then another ten split across two other games on the platform. No prompting, no notification pulling them back in — just round after round.
Watching that happen live was more validating than any amount of planning could have been. You can theorize all day about whether a mechanic is "sticky," but nothing replaces watching a real stranger, with zero context, choose to keep playing on their own.
What surprised me
The moments that seemed to matter most weren't the wins — they were the near-misses. Exiting one second before a round would've collapsed. Watching the multiplier climb past where you'd normally cash out, and choosing to hold anyway. That's the actual emotional core of the game, and it's not something you can fully predict from a design doc — you only really see it by watching someone experience it live.
The part I didn't expect
A few days later, the same country that first found the game had multiple active users — one player had referred a friend, who then played three different games back to back without any push from me. No ad spend, no targeting, just word of mouth from one person who liked it enough to bring someone else in.
That's the actual test of whether a mechanic is good: not whether you can explain why it should work, but whether a stranger, unprompted, wants to bring someone else along.
Try it
If you want to see what held someone's attention for half an hour: Cube Engines - Pyramid
Come talk about it, share your own runs, or just hang out: Discord
