Hello Product Hunt Network! 👋

Browser City Tycoon was vibe-coded and vibe-engineered together with Claude. I designed it, directed it, tested every version and decided what stayed. Claude helped me turn those ideas into working code, one evening at a time.

A little background: by day, I work full-time in finance. I’m not a game developer. But for years I’ve carried around a dream inspired by OpenTTD and SimCity: a game where tiny villages grow into bustling cities, connected by the roads, rails and routes you build. Two weeks ago, I finally started building it after work.

What it is 🚂

Browser City Tycoon is a free isometric transport tycoon that runs right in your browser. No download, no install, no cost. You start with $100,000 and a few small towns. Build bus stops, lay rails, open airports and ports, and carry passengers and cargo between them. Every delivery helps your towns grow, from cottages to apartments to glittering skylines.

Along the way you’ll unlock:

25 vehicles across buses, trucks, trains, planes and ships
14 industries with real production chains
50 attractions and 25 world-famous landmarks
Seasons, day and night, and a living world full of people, cars and animals
A Daily Challenge: the same map for everyone, 30 minutes, one shot at the leaderboard

What surprised me most 🛠️

I had a clear picture of how the game should look and play. What I didn’t expect was everything under the hood. Setting up Cloudflare hosting, configuring Firebase for cloud saves and Google sign-in, connecting a custom domain, building leaderboards, writing privacy pages: all of that took as much effort as the gameplay itself.

That’s the lesson I’d share with anyone curious about building with AI. Vibe coding gets you a prototype quickly. Shipping a real product is vibe engineering: understanding hosting, data, security, performance and all the unglamorous pieces that make something work for everyone on the internet. AI didn’t skip that work for me. It made it possible for one person with a day job to learn it and get it done.

A few fun facts: there are no image files for the game world. Every building, train and tree is drawn in code. The sound effects are synthesized live in your browser, and the soundtrack was composed with Suno AI.

How to play 🎮

Visit browsercitytycoon.com and jump in as a guest. Your progress stays in that browser. Sign in with Google anytime to keep your empire on any device and appear on the leaderboards. The game is built for a laptop or PC with a mouse and keyboard.

What’s next 🌱

Honestly, I don’t know where this journey leads. But if it inspires even one non-tech day-jobber to finally build the thing they’ve always dreamed about, that’s already a win.

I’d love your feedback and thanks for checking it out!

Dan